Autodesk® Design Review is a free program used for creating and reviewing DWF files. An open, published, and secure file format developed by Autodesk, DWF enables you to combine and publish rich 2D- and 3D-design data and share it with others.
Design Review enables your entire project or product team to view, print, measure, and markup DWF, DWG, DXF, PDF and raster files containing 2D and 3D content. Fully integrated with AutoCAD®, Inventor®, and Revit®, Design Review helps you easily share drawings, models, maps, and design data with team members, clients, consultants, contractors, partners, suppliers, and other reviewers who may not own or know how to use design software.
You can share designs for use with Design Review by email, websites, intranets, and physical media, such as DVDs. Download Design Review for free from http://www.autodesk.com/designreview-download. You can redistribute it on your internal network or deploy it as part of your corporate PC image (as long as it is distributed in its entirety, per the terms of the license agreement).
A DWF file can be used to organize sheet sets, models, animations, finite element analyses (FEA), and map information, as well as other project-related files, into a single, highly compressed file. Together with Design Review, DWF files help you enhance collaboration by clearly communicating information, such as design changes or corrections, all while reducing the printing and shipping costs associated with distributing paper copies to your extended team.
Much like Adobe® PDF files, DWF files are no more alterable than printed paper copies. Unlike PDF files, however, DWF files retain detailed design information and scale, and are therefore more suitable for architects, engineers, and designers.
The newest version of the DWF file format, DWFx, is based on the XML Paper Specification (XPS) from Microsoft. DWFx makes it easier to share design data with reviewers who cannot install software.
DWFx files can be opened and printed instantly using the free Microsoft XPS Viewer. Unlike DWF files, DWFx files include additional information to display design data in the Microsoft XPS Viewer. As such, DWFx files are larger than corresponding DWF files.
Currently, the Microsoft XPS Viewer does not support sheets containing 3D content, password-protected content, object properties, restricted content, or georeferenced map coordinates. In the Microsoft XPS Viewer, when attempting to view sheets DWFx files containing any of these unsupported features, a warning directs you to download and view the DWFx file in Design Review.
Most DWF files begin as a drawing or model created in such Autodesk programs as AutoCAD, Inventor, and Revit. Before a DWF file is published, the person publishing the DWF file determines which features (model, layouts, layers, blocks, named views, and so on) are included in the published DWF file. Once the content has been determined, the designer publishes the file from its original format to a DWF file and sends the DWF file to the review team to begin the digital design review process.
The digital workflow can be repeated indefinitely to support the iterative nature of the design and review process.