A new feature in AutoCAD that has great potential to improve workflows but has not yet seen the adoption rate that it deserves is the Shared Views feature. Shared Views are a way that any AutoCAD user may post a drawing to the Autodesk 360 cloud for free and allow others to review and markup a design regardless of their location or organization.
To see the Shared Views Feature in action, let’s consider a drawing of a proposed pipe network that is too be reviewed by a project manager in a different office (it could just as easily be someone working for a completely different company or reviewing agency).
To make this a Shared View, we must first ensure that we are logged-in to our Autodesk 360 account. These accounts are free and include cloud storage hosting for this feature to work. By default, this will be in the upper right-hand corner of AutoCAD as shown below. If you do not have an account, click this name dropdown and follow the instructions on the Autodesk website. Once completed, return to AutoCAD and login.
On the Collaborate tab, you will see a panel named Share. Click the Shared Views icon from this panel to open the Shared Views window. Once inside this window, click the New Shared View button to create a view from this drawing. You will be given options as to what you wish to view if you do not wish to share the drawing in its entirety.
After clicking the Share button, you will see a pop-up and icon in the status bar letting you know that the drawing view is being uploaded to the cloud. You should also receive an E-mail from Autodesk when the file is ready.
Open a web browser (Chrome seems to work best) and go to https://viewer.autodesk.com/designviews. Login to the website from the top right of the screen. From the Owned by Me tab, you should now see your drawing on the list of available drawings.
At the top-right corner of the drawing icon, you will see an ellipsis button. Click on this icon to set with whom this drawing will be shared. Once they login to the site using their own Autodesk 360 account, they will see your drawing on their Shared with me tab.
Once inside of the drawing, they will be able to make markups, look at advanced properties (if this option was selected during the publishing process), change layer visibility, etc. The reviewer can then click the Markup tool at the bottom of the screen and create basic markups which will appear in the drawing owner's comments list.
These comments can be accessed and reconciled in order. The designer will be able to make the changes, post replies to each markup, and check Resolve to remove the markup from the queue.
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