AutoCAD: Tips & Tricks

- [Instructor] Welcome to another AutoCAD tip and trick. And what we're going to be looking at now is utilizing the Autodesk Viewer. Now you may have already seen my tip and trick about sharing design views using the shared views palette, so we've already gone through that process in this particular video. So we've got a drawing for you, you can see there it's office plan dot DWG so you can utilize that if you want to send this to the Autodesk Viewer. Now what you've gotta realize is in this particular video we've already shared the design view.

What we're gonna look at now is how the Autodesk Viewer can assist us. So you'll notice I've got the shared views palette open already, and you can see there's my shared views that I've already created. Now office plan dot DWG has already been shared, it's here you can see there like so. Now what I want to do is make sure that I'm signed in to my Autodesk account. So if I go up here you can see, there you go look cad fm consultants Autodesk A360, I'm signed in already. You can tell by the little sort of blue symbol there.

So I'm already signed in to my Autodesk account, so what I should be able to do now is go to office plan collaboration here, click on it and this is one of my shared design views. So I can add a comment here if I want to in the palette, and start creating almost a social media kind of comments feed. But what I can also do is click on these little three dots here. And you can see there that I can view in browser, copy the link, extend the time frame 'cause it expires in 27 days, or I can just delete it from my shared views.

I want to view it in the browser in the Autodesk Viewer. So I click on view in browser and that will jump me straight into my preferred browser which is Google Chrome in this particular case. So you can see there it's loading up, takes a few seconds to load up. But the benefit I have is I don't have to sign in to Autodesk Viewer. Can you see I'm signed in already up here? And that's because I was signed in to my Autodesk account when I went to that shared view in the shared views palette. Now obviously you've got things like zoom and pan, I can hold down the wheel, as you can see I can pan when I move the mouse when I do that.

And rolling up and down on the mouse wheel, you can see that I can zoom in and zoom out. Just be aware it's the opposite direction to AutoCAD, just so it throws you a little bit, okay? Other things you can do, you can look at views. So if I click on views here, you can see there's our 2D model view. I can look at layers there as well if I want to. I can also close them. I've also got properties, I can go to settings as well. So these are my settings when I navigate and look at drawings in the Autodesk Viewer. Now I can restore all the default settings, I can change the navigation you'll notice.

Notice there with the mouse I can reverse the mouse zoom direction if I want to. Appearance 2D sheet color, so I can switch the sheet color white to black if I want to and so on. I'm gonna close that now because obviously there's settings there that I can change if I want to. More importantly, the Autodesk Viewer is designed for people that don't have AutoCAD. It's in a browser as you can see, and you can send people the URL of this shared view to look at in the Autodesk Viewer. So all they've got to do is have an Autodesk account to be able to sign in, that's it.

And then they can view the drawings and view the shared views very quickly and easily. More importantly, you'll notice here that they can add comments. So there's the comments panel there and I can add a comment if I wish. I can also print that drawing if I want to. I can also send a screenshot of that drawing if I want to. So I could zoom in on a particular view like so and just pan up a little bit, and I can screenshot that if I want to. I can also share this again and share it on, and there's the URL. I can copy it and that URL is then copied, I can put that into an email and send it to somebody else who might have an Autodesk account and may want to use the Autodesk Viewer just to view this particular design.

You'll also notice you've got the option there to preview the link. Now down at the bottom you've also got some commands as well. You've got home, so if I click on home now that'll take me all the way back to the beginning. I'm just gonna close the share part of the view there as well to give me a bit more space. I've also got fit, so if I click on fit that will fit the view a bit like zoom extends. There's pan there, there's zoom. I can measure distances, I can also markup. So if I click on markup, I can go in and I can start marking up by placing a nice red marker pen around that area there for example like so.

And then what I could do there is save that, that then is saved. And if I just come out to the fit now, that is saved and I've got a comment if you can see here, if I scroll down then there you go. I can add a comment to that 2D view now and it's got a different link there that I can send with that particular bit of red lining on the drawing in the Autodesk Viewer. Now I don't wanna go into too much detail here. It's a fairly simple concept, the Autodesk Viewer. But it's a really, really useful tool if you wanna get your designs out there quickly to somebody who doesn't have AutoCAD software.