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DWG (True/False)View

Autodesk says "Use DWG TrueView software to accurately view, plot, and publish authentic DWG files."

It would be nice if it were true.  But it's not.

DWG TrueView 2007, just released, does not accurately support DWG files from Mechanical Desktop or Land Desktop.  Not even the "Trusted DWG" files from the 2007 versions of those programs.

Why?  These products use custom ARX objects.  The object enablers for these are not built into the base AutoCAD program, upon which TrueView is based, nor are they available separately.

Here's my guess as to why this situation happened: Object enablers are created using the ObjectARX SDK.  One of the worst things Autodesk could imagine would be if people figured out how to use ObjectARX with TrueView.  (Do I need to paint this picture?)  More than likely they evicerated so much of the ARX API support from TrueView that the product is not able to support the object enablers.

You can take this guess as to the technical issue as mere speculation. 

But you don't need to speculate on this: DWG TrueView is not capable of accurately viewing all "Trusted DWG" files.  So what exactly is trustworthy about them?

Posted on Thursday, April 20, 2006 at 01:11PM by Registered CommenterEvan Yares in | Comments1 Comment

Reader Comments (1)

DWG TrueView can sometimes display FIELDS incorrectly. When referencing FIELDS such as page number or drawing title from Sheet Set Manager, TrueView drawings will display an out-of-date value of the FIELD (the last time the dwg was saved) while the same dwg viewed in AutoCAD will display the correct current value.
April 26, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterMichael Partenheimer

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