Viewing in black & white in DWG TrueView

[mfisher77]

We have a number of people in house, including the Engineering Director, that do not have AutoCAD, but they need to view the occasional DWG.

The preference is to view just like a dwf. (White background - black lines.)

This is not as easy in DWG TrueView. I did find the following tip in the Knowledge Base. 

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=8173331&linkID=9338137

While this is helpful, it does not give us the functionality we need. Most of the people involved are not AutoCAD users; we need a simple way to do this.

Example of simplicity in Design Review:

[pendean]

Your AutoCAD users can set their layouts to display pen settings as a default in each respective layout's pagesetup, so your viewer users can view the files in B/W as long as the layouts are up to date (your AutoCAD users' task).

If and when they need to be in modelspace, you will be faced with the limitation of this freebie. Unless you task your AutoCAD users into accommodating the viewer users (AutoCAD is about giving control to the file creator, not anyone else). An easy task with some programming.

There are non-Autodesk viewers that have a button to click to get B/W in modelspace if you want to go that route.

[mfisher77]

Dean,

Yes, that would work if everyone were using layouts, but we have a number of users that are still using only modelspace. Plus, the DWG files are often from an outside source.

You mentioned:

"There are non-Autodesk viewers that have a button to click to get B/W in modelspace if you want to go that route."

This is what we want. Please let me know of any viewers that would allow us to view modelspace in B/W.

I have tried DraftSight & eDrawings.

Thank you,

Matt

[pendean]

The 'viewer' is just AutoCAD: about as unfriendly as it gets for casual users. That's the problem, you can't skimp of AutoCAD-training just because they use a viewer.

Since you all seem to also be users of the DWF viewer too, why are you not standardized on that? That way you get DWF files all the time. Sure, everyone wants to view a DWG file but it's not really necessary, and DesignReview will open a DWG and translate to a DWF on the fly (if the viewer is also installed).

And your users will have the opportunity to markup and comment, something they sure can't do with the viewer.

And then of course their is AutoCADWS: nothing to install and everyone can be invited to view a DWG and do more with it. Ignore this option at your peril, collaboration and review are it's strengths.

Bentley's free viewer had a B/W, or used to last year when I had to help a client with it. What's left of purchased viewers market do so as well.

[mfisher77]

We often get drawings from customers and vendors that non-AutoCAD personnel need to view. 

"DesignReview will open a DWG and translate to a DWF on the fly (if the viewer is also installed)."

We would like to be able to use this functionailty of Design Review.

If I try to open a DWG with Design Review, through a right-click open with, it will appear to begin opening Design Review, but it never finishes the open. If I try open a DWG through open in Design Review I get nothing, even though it spent several seconds processing.

I have DWG TrueView 2011, Autodesk Design Review 2011 & Inventor Suite 2011 on my system. (2010 is still on system as well.)

I am running Windows 7 Professional 64-bit.