Is Design Review discontinued?

[FT398]

So all the 2014 products are out now but Design Review 2014 is conspicuous in its absence. It isn't available for download (still only 2013 available) and it hasn't been included in any of the other product installers where it always has been in the past.

Have I missed something or is this the end of the road?

[rkmcswain]

Vitornis wrote:
Yeah I remembered when it was offered for 129$ and then on month it was
offered at a discounted price of 99$. So our company bought several
licenses and shortly after that is was offered for free. Bigest waste of
money Autodesk suckered us out of.

I think what @chadlk was trying to say is.... Make ADR a paid, supported, mature product. Don't just throw something out there 5 years ago, give it away from free and then turn it into abandonware.... 

[toddw.schuler]

Scott,

When it goes out.  That is assuming that we send every drawing and every model is going to be sent out of the company. Many companies don't send drawings out.  Some companies are fortunate to have machine shops in house and they fabricate what they design.

I see PDF as a viable option at this point but I am disapointed in the loss of so many of the things Design Review can do.  As  the provider, Autodesk provides the solution, As customers, we must learn to adapt to what is provided as we always have or move on.

You should consider locking this before it becomes a hate fest.

Thanks for the feedback.

[scott.sheppard]

There was a suggestion to lock this thread to avoid it becoming a hate fest. I have no problem with the comments in this thread, but let's talk about the term "abandonware" that was recently used. The original question for this thread was "Is Design Review discontinued?" The answer is "sort of." There will be no new releases of Autodesk Design Review, but we continue to support the current release. All of the complaints in this thread are about something that might be a problem in the future. The current release of Design Review was published in 2012 and continues to operate today. No one has been unable to do something with Design Review today that they could do yesterday. We recognize that the cloud solutions have a way to go which is why we continue to advocate use of Design Review 2013 for those who want it.

[WM_Ron_Allen]

Scott,

I appreciate your efforts and level headed approach on everything you have done for us as a community. Wish I could apologize for the lovely hot headed responses of some of the members here( you probably deal with this a lot).

At last account, Autodesk wasn't patching ADR2012. Is it compatible with 2016 autocad or the next AutoCAD file format update? We had issues with ADR not correctly registering areas of polygons, values for areas kept shifting, was that ever patched? Consider open sourcing it?

IMO I would rather deal with PDFs and have an import and smart tracking markup tools to import and overlay back I to sheets, views and schedules VIA GUID; That would be compatible with the whole world and not just AutoDesk~ world info has got to be more accessible and compatible or we are heading for a 'BABEL style super collision on the information superhighway.

[Tim.West]

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@Anonymous wrote:

There was a suggestion to lock this thread to avoid it becoming a hate fest. I have no problem with the comments in this thread, but let's talk about the term "abandonware" that was recently used. The original question for this thread was "Is Design Review discontinued?" The answer is "sort of." There will be no new releases of Autodesk Design Review, but we continue to support the current release. All of the complaints in this thread are about something that might be a problem in the future. The current release of Design Review was published in 2012 and continues to operate today. No one has been unable to do something with Design Review today that they could do yesterday. We recognize that the cloud solutions have a way to go which is why we continue to advocate use of Design Review 2013 for those who want it.

---

Scott I also appreciate your level head amongst the fanboy fanatics (of which I am one). The quoted post is however contradictory to your previous posts. Post 35 from you suggests the the answer to the OP is, 'Yes' Design Review is to be discontinued.

There have been many concerns regarding thesis continuation of this product. My main concern is the 'Lowball' approach.

A paid product was offered

many didn't appreciate the value of a digital markup tool causing little uptake

price tag dropped

many users investigate and adopt a 'free' tool that is useful and fits their workflow

part of the functionality is included in multiple 'paid' products

product is discontinued.

Many of us are paying for a suite of software. Autodesk ahave discontinued standalone licenses so new users must buy into a suite, whether the need the added tools of not (I really like the additional tools). Why not turn Design Review back into a paid product, and include it in all the suites (meaning ADSK just need to remove the free downlinks) and continue to keep their customers happy? Better still, add commenting and save view functionality to Navisworks freedom.

I have been hearing for years (check the various forums you have responded to Scott, years) assurances that the cloud/web offerings will be maturing to include all the functionality of the standalone. Years have proven that this is a load of :censored:. Offering a broken, stunted service as a replacement to your users is particularly insulting, as many of your users have been beta testing (I do supply crash reports regardless of the insulting responses from ADSK support) your products, helping them to become the amazing product our imaginations foresee.

I am locked onto the Autodesk product line and will continue to push to make these products the best they can be. I will also continue to provide ADSK a with constructive feedback, and remind you that regardless of the 'vision' you claim as your own, it is actually the feedback loop you are exposed to based on the passion, innovation, and persistence of your user base.

[scott.sheppard]

With regard to me answers of "Yes it is being discontinued" and "Sort of." - I am willing to combine them as "Yes it is being discontinued, but it has not been discontinued yet." Yes, there will be no new releases; however, you can still continue to use Autodesk Design Review 2013 today. With regard to packaging it into a suite, there are a few issues:

a. The suite is for the user who purchases it.

b. Autodesk Design Review is typically used by a person other than the one who uses the suite.

It's not about whether we charge for Autodesk Design Review or not. It's that it is a Windows-only piece of software, and today, the world is bigger than Windows. This is much like the DOS users telling us that with DOS being 99% of the market, why would we consider supporting Windows in 1996? Smartphones and tablet devices are where project stakeholders will want to review and markup designs. The tablets are getting bigger and more capable all the time.

[warrentdo]

Hello Scott,

We really could do with Dates if Design review is going to be discontinued.

We really don't what to find out that 2016 r3 or 2017 suites are not compatible with design review.

We have to plan for this product being discontinued as we have work flows centred around it.

Changes to our quality procedures will take time to do and implement.

I know that I keep banging on about my security issues but we cannot use tablets or phones on our secure projects.

Perhaps my and other peoples interpretation to a personal cloud is wrong, and indeed the data does not 'leave the building'

I know it is cross threading (no mechanical pun intended)

Could you please explain how a personal cloud differs from how we current run our software now?

We currently have our local workstation machines installed with inventor and vault client for example, we also have a vault sever sat on the same secure LAN with an air gap to separate it from the world. 

This should squash one topic that is being bounced around this thread.

If the data stays local we are happy 🙂

Regards

Warren.

[Tim.West]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

With regard to me answers of "Yes it is being discontinued" and "Sort of." - I am willing to combine them as "Yes it is being discontinued, but it has not been discontinued yet." Yes, there will be no new releases; however, you can still continue to use Autodesk Design Review 2013 today. With regard to packaging it into a suite, there are a few issues:

a. The suite is for the user who purchases it.

b. Autodesk Design Review is typically used by a person other than the one who uses the suite.

It's not about whether we charge for Autodesk Design Review or not. It's that it is a Windows-only piece of software, and today, the world is bigger than Windows. This is much like the DOS users telling us that with DOS being 99% of the market, why would we consider supporting Windows in 1996? Smartphones and tablet devices are where project stakeholders will want to review and markup designs. The tablets are getting bigger and more capable all the time.

---

Scott,

I can still use DOS today, 20 years after windows was released. I will be able to use design review for a similar period of time. It is only a windows package as it hasn't been ported to Mac or linux... Though it appears that there is good reason it wasn't ported as ADSK can't make it work as a web app or smart phone app. (Unless markups are finally recognised between these platforms and frankly I've given up hope).

Point of clarity. ADR has been discontinued. This happened in 2012. .dwf hasn't yet which I guess is a major part of the concern for me. 

It it appears that those of us outside the states who don't have the big bag cloud hanging over our heads, who have to build large structures in 'The middle of nowhere™', those who don't have to collaborate with a Starchitect in Europe and a structural engineer in the US, will have to resort to solutions outside the ADSK 'when it rains it pours' such as BCF.

[scott.sheppard]

"Could you please explain how a personal cloud differs from how we current run our software now? We currently have our local workstation machines installed with inventor and vault client, for example, we also have a vault server sat on the same secure LAN with an air gap to separate it from the world. This should squash one topic that is being bounced around this thread."

One of the technologies we have is the "large model viewer." It is part of our A360 solution. It is not a separate application that you download and install. It is built into A360. Think of it like the shopping cart functionality on Amazon.com. You don't download and install the shopping cart application. You just use the shopping cart. The large model viewer is like that. You just use it when you visit the site.

You mentioned that you are using Autodesk Vault on a secure LAN. Imagine if the Vault team integrated the large model viewing capability into a future release of Autodesk Vault. You would update your copy of Vault. After doing so, your users who wanted to see design data would not have to use Design Review. They could just use the browser and see the design. This would work for PCs, Macs, smartphones, and tablets. All of these devices would be hooked to your secure LAN via cables or WiFi. Now take that a step further when we add markup capability to the large model viewer. Then your users could view and markup all of your design data using just your secure LAN. They could do this on all of these devices - not just Windows which is where Autodesk Design Review operates.

[Tim.West]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

You mentioned that you are using Autodesk Vault on a secure LAN. Imagine if the Vault team integrated the large model viewing capability into a future release of Autodesk Vault. You would update your copy of Vault. After doing so, your users who wanted to see design data would not have to use Design Review. They could just use the browser and see the design. This would work for PCs, Macs, smartphones, and tablets. All of these devices would be hooked to your secure LAN via cables or WiFi. Now take that a step further when we add markup capability to the large model viewer. Then your users could view and markup all of your design data using just your secure LAN. They could do this on all of these devices - not just Windows which is where Autodesk Design Review operates.

---

I was starting a rant, then tested the functionality of the current web/mobile offering of A360... Commenting functionality has reduced on the ios app...

Bahahahahahahaha...

Lets wait for the Vault commenting app that allows access from any platform... Will it be as much of an abortion as the A360 offering? Can I comment on the iOS app... no, I can take a snapshot of some MS paint style markups and save it alongside the file... Can I see my comments from the web app on the mobile... um, nope, desktop... um, nope...

Scott, I think you just qualified for my list of tech comedians...

[scott.sheppard]

"Scott, I think you just qualified for my list of tech comedians..."

I am not sure if I can win. It's just an honor to be nominated.

Once again everyone is pointing to the fact that our cloud offerings today do not measure up to their expectations. That is exactly my point, and that is why Autodesk Design Review is still supported today. When the cloud offerings do measure up, you won't even miss Design Review because your users will be viewing and marking up your designs using their smartphones and tablets. Until then, everyone should continue to download the current Autodesk Design Review.

[Tim.West]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Autodesk Design Review is still supported today.

---

Supported... You are being pretty liberal with the meaning there... "Still available for download", I guess can be stretched to mean Supported...

To me supported would mean that subsequent (read current) releases  True View would still allow ADR to open .dwg files without hacking my registry.
At least checking for updates no longer sends us to the non-existing, worked better than the current, web version and iOS app...

---

@Anonymous wrote:

 Once again everyone is pointing to the fact that our cloud offerings today do not measure up to their expectations.

---

This is a great euphemism for "Going Backwards".

[scott.sheppard]

Many Autodesk employees read the forums. We often discuss what we find via email. In an email this morning, I asked if the Autodesk DWG TrueView 2017 installer could create registry entries so that Autodesk Design Review 2013 would be able to use it to view DWG files. It was received favorably by the development team. I can't make any promises, but it has a decent chance since the developers are considering it.

[bbeilke]

Scott,

Does Autodesk consider that fact that no matter how great your cloud offerings may eventually be, they will not be a solution for everyone.  For example, I often find myself at one of our quarries (often remote locations) where cell phone coverage can be very spotty or weak, especially if I'm working down in the pit.  If the only way I can access the DWF files that I may need is through the cloud, then I'm out of luck.  Currently I often have to rely quite heavily on having a dedicated DWF viewer installed on my laptop along with copies of the DWF files I need.  No amount of improvement to your cloud is going to change that.  

And that doesn't even get into the issue of our owners not wanting any of our documents hosted on 3rd party sites at this time in the first place.

[scott.sheppard]

1. The cloud solution will have an offline mode. In addition to being in remote places with no connectivity, people will be on airplanes.

2. For users who want to keep their data private, they will be able to host our solutions on their own servers and access their data via their private local area networks. The private cloud will come after the public cloud solution has been perfected.

So until these 2 things are true, people can continue to use the free Autodesk Design Review.

[girishbhatt84]

Hello Scott,

I want to know if 64 bit version of Design review is available. I am migrating my application from 32 bit to 64 bit and i need 64 bit dlls of design review.

If yes, let me know the release or planned release date.

If not, do you recommend any work around.

Thanks in Advance 🙂

Thanks,

Girish Bhatt

[toddw.schuler]

Design Review will install and run in a 64-bit operating system.


Todd Schuler
Design and Drafting Supervisor
Energizer Holdings, Inc.
T: 440-835-7876


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[scott.sheppard]

Although Design Review is only a 32-bit application, it will run on a 64-bit operating system. I have it running on 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Windows 10. Are you asking because you have DWF files that are so large that they require 64-bit addresses to view them? If so, the Large Model Viewer which is integrated into our cloud offerings is the solution Autodesk is currently offering. There are no plans to make a 64-bit Autodesk Design Review because Autodesk Design Review is Windows-only and our customers need solutions for multiple platforms. Customers who don't want to put their designs on our secure servers can continue to use the 32-bit version fo Design Review until self-hosted versions of our cloud offerings are available.

[jboothcadtech]

Hi Scott,

Tough room huh?

If we use the cloud to markup the dwf, do you think the markup command will remain?

If pdf does eventually win, will the markup set manager be updated to allow pdf format?

I'm developing a new workflow with the markup set manager at the center and, after reading this discussion, am now a little apprehensive.

Any thoughts?

[scott.sheppard]

AutoCAD has a long history of leaving old commands in palce for legacy reasons even when replacement commands are added.

It is quite possoble that the SHeet Set Manager could be expanded for additional support of PDF.

For now, I would go full steam ahead on teh SHeet Set Manager and DWF until the cloud-based solutions meet your needs.