BIM 360 TEAM - error - Viewer can't see content of PDF files

[Ezekiel12]

Hi,

so... this is new for me. Apparently as Im testing, when User is Viewer, he ca see the content of DWGs, XLSX and other files... but NO PDFs... it will just not show it to him. 

And when you make the same user Editor, it will. And of course, its a viewer, so the user should have VIEW access to EVERYTHING.... 😞 

This is big error. Can you please fix that?

Regards,

Matt

[asiteur]

Hi there,

This is indeed a limitation of the product, you could have found that also here:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/a360-forum/new-permissions-feature-viewer-role/m-p/7528977#M13757

Or here:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/bim-360-team-forum/can-t-view-pdf-files/td-p/6781836

PDF's at the moment are visualised by the browser, similar to any website with a pdf on it. As viewers are not supposed to download the file this way of viewing 'violates' the viewer role permissions. I'm just guessing but I guess that's part of the issue here.

[Bud_Schroeder_ADESK · Accepted solution]

Hi Matt,

Thanks for sending in your question and this is a known limitation with PDF files. The team has disabled viewing PDF because the files can be downloaded even in a viewer mode as the viewer for PDF is opening the file locally on your system.  Take a look at the following links, where this is covered. 

BIM 360 Team Forum - Can't view PDF's:

New Permissions Feature - Viewer Role:

Brett had reached out to the team on this yesterday and there is no ETA on when this will be changed.  

Thanks again for posting your question and hope this helps explain why it works this way.  Have a great day. 

[Ezekiel12]

Oh hell no... this is know issue for almost a year?  That will damage the client view on this in a big way... jesus 😞 

He can't make the users editors and e has TONS of PDF files for the Viewers... goddammit. 

But thx for your help 😞 😞 

[Bud_Schroeder_ADESK]

Hi Matt,

Thanks again for sharing. I did just grab all your comments and share them with the team and let them know that this is very frustrating for anyone that uses PDF files and the Viewer role.

Thank you very much for sharing this feedback, it is very helpful to share this with the team.

[Ezekiel12]

Btw Bud, I know that I my sound a bit pissed. But I am really gratefull for your help. Is is just very frustrating..

BTW. Do you know that you (Autodesk) do not care about "Download" thingy of Viewers at Docs... You CAN view PDFs... and manually download ANYTHING... as Viewer...  🙂

Just FYI...  🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 

[asiteur]

Hi there,

Apart from the language, I see your frustration.

After your claim that viewers can download files,  I've been testing this a bit, and I can't really reproduce it.

Could you elaborate a bit on what you mean?

As a viewer I didn't see any download button for CAD files, and as they are shown in a webviewer it's pretty diffcult to get them locally.

What I did notice though is that when viewing .doc files, that right-clicking on the file provides a download button for PDF downloads. So although not in their native format, you can download them as a viewer.

Also, when you share a PDF by link, regardless of the download setting, you can view and download the PDF.

Adding this all up, I would conclude that adding download rights for PDF to the Viewer role doesn't impose any additional 'bussiness threads'.

In the meantime, as some sort of workaround for the PDF problem, you could consider saving the PDF's as docs, or images. There are plenty of tools online that could do that for you. Something else I have suggested before is using the 'share links' and pasting them in a document that the Viewers can view. Then they click on the link and get the PDF (of course, inconvenient for large numbers of files).

[Ezekiel12]

Thx Alexander for your info.

at start... my last post was about DOCS 360. I ment it in a way (hey, Autodesk... as Viewer in DOCS, you don't care about if Viewer download ANYThing... and he can)

And now back to TEAM

You have good observation, that I didn't had... as a Viewer in TEAM, I can download Word or Excel as PDFs.... 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 

And I don't think I can eve say to client... "Please use Word, not PDF, because PDFs are blocked because user can download it...Yes, yes, he can even download the Word as PDF, just stop thinking about it...." 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂