SubscribeIf you work in a fairly large company, you probably have a distributed workforce. Your day might start with a call to your team in Europe, and end with a meeting with another team in China. Or, if you’re all on one continent, you might have a design team in New York leading a project being built in LA. You get the picture.
You AEC folks work with a number of people outside your company every day to manage construction or architectural jobs in progress—some all the way around the globe from your office.
(And even for those of you in smaller companies- you can't tell me you guys are always together in the same office!)
AutoCAD WS to the rescue! Just in case you haven’t heard about it yet, it’s a web and mobile app that lets you view, edit, and collaborate virtually to review and mark up your DWG files in real-time.
Did I mention it is free, free, free?
So how does this baby work?
If you are working from a desktop or laptop, you can collaborate using the web browser version of the app (you can find this right at www.autocadws.com). Upload and share a file, and then start a co-editing session to edit a design. It’s pretty cool; you can see the other person’s cursor and all the edits are updated in each browser! Plus, the time-line keeps a record of all the annotations and edits you make (don't you wish AutoCAD did that?)
But best of all – you can also share and collaborate on a design from your mobile device too! (iPad, iPhone, yadda, yadda)
Note: The only difference is that you don’t have the “zooming and following” of the cursor, so you do need to position your drawing on your mobile screen at the location where your colleague is making the edits to see them happening in real time.
AutoCAD WS works from one mobile to another, as well as from a mobile device and a desktop (web browser) session.
(and it's still free, free, free)
Think about it – Everything stops when someone has a question. This virtual collaboration can help you keep projects moving forward by immediately answering questions in real-time with someone back at in the office or in the field. Get answers right away, avoid back and forth travel time, and reduce your carbon footprint too. Sounds like a Green Win-Win! And it's super easy to take those markedup drawings back into AutoCAD for final updates.
If you want to see it in action- check out the video:
Got a mobile device other that an iPad or iPhone (lwho said anything about the Droid?) Register to be the first to know when you’ll have another choice: http://autode.sk/acad_ws_android Check it out!