View a File

You can preview a file before you open it for editing by choosing a file and selecting the View tab in the Preview pane. 

To view a file in Vault:

• Select a file.
• In the preview pane, click the View tab.

The preview style defaults to a carousel view of thumbnails, allowing you to cycle through historical versions of the file in Vault Basic and historical revisions of the file in Vault Workgroup and Vault Professional. The file version or revision is displayed at the top of each thumbnail, and the last check-in date is displayed at the bottom.

The Viewer

The Viewer includes tools to explore, examine, and review the design. The Viewer automatically converts your design files to a representation of the designs.

1. In the View tab, click the thumbnail to view the file.
2. The selected file is displayed in the preview pane using Autodesk Viewer or Autodesk Design Review (depends on the option selected under Configure Vault Options for viewing the files). By default, the Autodesk Design Review (ADR) is set to view the files.

   

3. Click View in Window to view the file in a separate window.
   Note: If you have selected Autodesk Design Review (ADR) for viewing a file, ensure ADR is installed. You can go to https://www.autodesk.com for a free download of ADR.
   1. If the selected file does not have an associated visualization file, the view is empty. Click Open with Viewer to view the file in an external application.
   2. A warning message is displayed if:
      1. the visualization file Visualization Compliance property has a value of Legacy or Not Synchronized
      2. there are newer versions of related files
      3. the visualization file is not the most current version
      4. the visualization file is not the most current version and is not synchronized with the data file version.
   3. If a warning message is displayed indicating that the visualization file may be out-of-date due to a newer data file, you can publish an updated visualization file and attach it to the data file, discarding the out-of-date visualization file. Click Update in the View tab to update the visualization file for the currently selected file version.
4. Use the viewer controls to zoom, pan, print, etc. See Viewer Toolbar details for more information.

   For help on using the ADR, right-click the file within the View tab and click Open in Autodesk Design Review. Select the F1 key in the Autodesk Design Review window to view the help.

5. Use the version slider to see the history of the visualization file.

Note: Only DWF/DWFx and PDF files are supported when viewing with Autodesk Viewer.

Viewer Toolbar

The Autodesk Viewer has a default toolbar located at the bottom of the page to help you interact with and inspect designs.

For more information on viewer tools, see Autodesk Viewer Tools.