AutoCAD Remote access and editing

[Anonymous]

I'd like to be away from my desk and not take a laptop.  I'd like to be able to store a drawing file on a remote server in the cloud.  Within that cloud would be my file and AutoCAD.  Therefore, as long as I had access to the Internet and a PC/laptop with a supported OS, I could go to anywhere in the world and access and edit my file without having to haul a laptop about.  Autodesk may already be offering such a facility, but if so I can't find it on their website. It seems such an obvious facility: we can stop worrying about lugging laptops all over the place and access our work wherever we can find a computer.  I'm not talking about some sort of mobile phone app with very limited editing functionality.  I'm talking about a full Autodesk editing programme, which, along with a given .dwg file, will be remotely accessible.

@Anonymous,  

john.vellek has edited your subject line for clarity: Remote access and editing a file

[john.vellek · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous,

At present, AutoCAD is a stand-alone application intended to run on your local harddrive.  In fact, to run it in any other environment such as Citrix, requires special licensing.  Autodesk Web is now available to some customers and allows true editing and creation of DWG files over the web. This is still a young product and has limited feature set.

There are some competitors to AutoCAD that appear to be cloud based but I have no personal experience with them so I can't attest to whether or not they measure up and provide full features and compatibility.

Please select the Accept as Solution button if my post solves your issue or answers your question.

[dgorsman]

Not sure how many would want to be doing anything beyond basic work on some random, publicly accessible computer.  Same basic principle as not doing online banking in such places.

There are a number of problems to overcome for most users e.g. customizations, third-party add-ons and associated licenses, XREFs, block libraries, etc.

[gotphish001]

I'm not sure how they were setting it up but my school had something like this. When I started out every computer had autocad on it. At the end of my schooling they starting switching over to autocad was run through a virtual machine (I think) on a server and you just connected to it with the computer you were on in the lab. It was only my last couple months they started doing this, but I can tell you it sucked. It was terrible to work on a machine that was set up like that. If I went into a lab and it was set up remotely like this, I would log out and go to another lab that had autocad locally on the machine. It just was jumpy, slow and aggravating to work on autocad remotely like that. Now they were just implementing it so maybe the bugs weren't worked out yet and it could be great a couple years later as that was a while ago. If something was going to take me 5 minutes normally, it took 20 minutes on the remote version because of the jumpiness. Selecting the wrong thing and so on.

[DarrenP · Accepted solution]

your company can setup Citrix enviroment where everything is hosted in the cloud including Autocad & all you do is log in to a browser but this does not come cheap

[RobDraw]

I've accessed both AutoCAD and Revit utilizing Windows remote desktop, VPN, and some sort of 3rd party application that works like a remote desktop. VPN was the worst. The other two work but as @gotphish001 said, they can be a bit clunky.

[john.vellek]

Hi @Anonymous,

I am checking back to see if my post or others helped you with your problem. Please mark a post or posts as accepted solutions if they resolved the issue or give me a bit more detail on this issue so we can continue to work towards getting this solved.

Please hit the Accept as Solution button if a post or posts solves your issue or answers your question.