topic Re: Is there a DWF viewer for the Mac? in Collaboration with other software

Is there a DWF viewer for the Mac?

tsturm — Wed, 28 Jul 2004 19:23:48 GMT

I need to find a DWF viewer for looking at material on manufacturer's website. Does anyone know of a viewer to plug into my browser?

Thanks.

Seems like Autodesk released a version called DWF 6 almost a year ago. Nothing out there that I have seen.

Re: Is there a DWF viewer for the Mac?

Anonymous — Wed, 28 Jul 2004 19:48:11 GMT

i posted a, horribly convoluted, way to view dwf's some time ago

i'm sure a search for dwf would find it

there should be a better way but i haven't found it

bill

Re: Is there a DWF viewer for the Mac?

Anonymous — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 02:44:07 GMT

It seems that the only Mac compatible option is CADViewer. It is VERY expensive for a small or sole practice though.

There is a demo download of CADViewer Lite available at:

http://www.cadviewer.com/Database/register.php

I am not sure how limited the demo is, but since they are selling the server license for about $950 I am guessing it is not a serviceable solution.

Re: Is there a DWF viewer for the Mac?

tsturm — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 03:06:21 GMT

Then are there any suggestions on how tto contact the manufacturers who insist on publishing their detaiils in this format on the web from doing so.

I would really like to see the details at the USG website. However, they are in DWF.

Has anyone tried to view these websites using Virtual PC and a window browser? I got stuck last time trying to sometthing like this. My problem was getting a Java plugin for the windows browser.

Matt.
I found the CADViewer. I did not spend the time to find the cost. I was hoping it was a shareware thing.

CAN anyone at GS speak up about a viewer for the Mac?

Thanks

Re: Is there a DWF viewer for the Mac?

stefan — Wed, 18 Aug 2004 11:38:43 GMT

FWIW, I suggested Autodesk during the beta test of the DWF-Viewer (recently) to make a DWF-viewer for Mac too, but I'm not sure it the relative small amount of Mac users will justify the cost of implementing it.

All their latest software (AutoCAD 2005, DWF Composer, DWF Viewer) is using the Microsoft .NET platform more and more and (unless the .NET platform itself is turning cross-platform, which is not unlikely at all) thus at the moment very much tied to MS Libraries and support.

There are efforts for getting the .NET platform running on Linux, so other UNIX-like OS'es are not impossible (like the Mac OSX FreeBSD core).

Re: Is there a DWF viewer for the Mac?

Anonymous — Thu, 19 Aug 2004 17:59:01 GMT

I think I've used Project Reviewer to do this when I needed to. You have to "trick it" of course. You publish a make-believe local project and then in the Finder you switch in the DWFs you want to see for the ones you published. You have to get the naming right.

Re: Is there a DWF viewer for the Mac?

stefan — Fri, 20 Aug 2004 08:34:12 GMT

Ted wrote:
I think I've used Project Reviewer to do this when I needed to. You have to "trick it" of course. You publish a make-believe local project and then in the Finder you switch in the DWFs you want to see for the ones you published. You have to get the naming right.

I very much doubt if "Project Reviewer" will handle the new DWF-formats that can be produced with the recent Autodesk software. The format has been dramatically improved, including 3D-geometry (although at the moment only Inventor can generate them, but I think ADT & Revit will soon be able to do this too). They will probably market it as something like PDF in 3D I guess.

It can probably work for the DWF-files that ArchiCAD itself generates and for older DWF-files made in AutoCAD.

Re: Is there a DWF viewer for the Mac?

Anonymous — Fri, 20 Aug 2004 13:57:54 GMT

http://www.macnn.com/news/21018

Re: Is there a DWF viewer for the Mac?

aahatimo — Fri, 20 Aug 2004 17:28:59 GMT

still in the works from a recent article? http://go.cadwire.net/?34651,1,1

Re: Is there a DWF viewer for the Mac?

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 13:53:27 GMT

I see this subject has gone dead, but....

CAN anyone at GS speak up about a viewer for the Mac?

Is there a licensing issue with the Graphisoft Project Reviewer, as to why Graphisoft can't make it available with an 'Open file' button so that you can open any DWF.

If there are no licensing issues then why not make a limited version of the viewer available free on the Graphisoft site for all Mac users, it would I think help to promote ArchiCAD as well as keeping us Mac users happy.