Draftsight opens as Student version

[mike.russell]

Hello all,

First let me tell you our department setup, we primarily use Solidworks for our projects and drawings.

We have a very large quantity of legacy drawings created over the years in Autocad so we have 2 seats of 2019 Autocad to support these drawings.

One of our managers uses Draftsight to open drawing and yesterday he marked up a drawing and saved it. (this has been done in the past without an issue)

Now the drawing opens with a warning that it was created with a Student version of Autocad?

(see attachment)

I created this original drawing on Autocad 2000i (how many remember that version)

As I had to make a revision to the drawing I corrected the issue and move on.

(no I did not save a copy of the offending drawing)

Is there some other tool that  we can use for review and mark-up?

Thanks.

[rkmcswain · Accepted solution]

Perhaps Draftsight is piggybacking on the Autodesk EDU source code? Other than that, no idea, but I would get rid of that drawing or risk it infecting all of your drawings.

Autodesk Design Review can do markups, but only on DWF files.

Autodesk DWG Trueview can read DWG files in read-only view mode only.

More info here.

Other AutoCAD clones out there (can't mention names here) can certainly open, edit, and save DWG files without marking them as EDU version. Source: I've done it.

[mike.russell]

Thanks  rkmcswain,

Time to Flush Draftsight I guess.

We will give Trueview with Design Review a try, as it will allow opening of DWG files with redline mark-ups.

Thanks for your help.

[mike.russell]

Design Review will mark up DWG files

[cadffm]

Known problem

>"Perhaps Draftsight is piggybacking on the Autodesk EDU source code?"
DraftSight only set the edu-Information (or only a wrong information which adesk interpret as EDU)

>"but I would get rid of that drawing or risk it infecting all of your drawings."
Not possible with with AutoCAD 2015 or younger (before 2015 you copied the flag from file to file, but not with 2019+)

>" Other AutoCAD clones out there (can't mention names here) can certainly open, edit, and save DWG files without marking them as EDU version. Source: I've done it.
0.00$ Programs that can handle dwg files with new features like annotation and dynamic blocks without problem, which? (ok, you don't know the name).

Write to dassault, they should fix the code for dwg writing, bricscad had the same mistake and fix it with 2018.2.10 update, it's just a bird poo ;-D

EDIT:

Just so that there are no misunderstandings to my statement "$ 0.00 Programs that can handle dwg files with new features like annotation and dynamic blocks without problems" in relation to DraftSight.

DraftSight can not create or modify dynamic blocks, but it also does not destroy the dynamics (as long as you do not change the blocks in DraftSight).

[pendean]

You're not going to like the Trueview (only a reader) / DesignReview (only marksup DWF files, no DWG files) combo very much as your markups will only be in DWF format.

The screenshot above is quite deceptive and many noobs fall for the trickery highlighted https://www.autodesk.com/products/dwg/viewers

[mike.russell]

Thanks, pendean

I would have believed the misleading marketing text. (having never used Design Review).

Well we will have to find something else for this person to look at drawings with.

Most of the time that is all the he needs is just to open and view a drawing. So maybe just Trueview for him and he can print to pdf and do mark up's if he needs. He does have a pdf editor.

Thanks again for the help to all involved!

[rkmcswain]

@mike.russell  wrote:

I would have believed the misleading marketing text. (having never used Design Review).

<roll eyes> - I can't believe they are still marketing it this way. This has been an issue since day one.

What it does is that Design Review will allow you to "select" a .DWG file, then it attempts to open the .DWG file in DWG Trueview behind the scenes, print it to .DWF, and then open the .DWF in Design Review.

The problem is, how does it know what you want to print? Not to mention there are many problems reported where Design Review can't find or doesn't recognize the install of DWG Trueview, so that step fails, etc. [1] [2] [3] [4] It's deceptive at best.