Yankee Chronicler
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I perhaps could have posted this under Building Code Administration, but it's not a perfect fir there so I decided to post it here. If your department accepts digital construction documents, more than likely the usual format will be PDF -- as it should be.Nonetheless, the general public is endlessly inventive in its collective efforts to frustrate the poor, over-burdened code officials. We've seen a recent "uptick" (how I hate that word) in digital submissions consisting of a plan sketched free-hand on a sheet of lined paper torn out of a notebook and scanned or photographed to .JPG or .PNG format with a cell phone and then sent to someone in the department (usually the first name they could find an e-mail address for) using the "Share" function from the cell phone's photo gallery.
And, once in a while, we'll get a drawing from somebody who must have gotten a student copy of AutoCAD when they were in college 20 years ago and they fired it up to draw plans for their new deck or family room addition. So you get this file in AutoCAD .dwg format (because God forbid our intrepid hero should know how to export or plot to PDF) -- what can you do if you can't or don't want to just reject it outright?
Option 1 is that Autodesk, the company that sells (sorry -- rents) AutoCAD and Revit publishes a FREE utility that allows you to open AutoCAD files and view them, but not make any editorial changes. It also allows converting new .dwg files to be compatible with older versions of AutoCAD. It's called DWG TrueView and it's entirely free. It only runs under windows, but most municipal and county computer systems are probably locked into Microsoft anyway, so for most of us that's not an issue.
Option 2 is to actually install a program that can open and edit AutoCAD .dwg files. There are a number of commercial programs that can do that, all of them cheaper than AutoCAD itself. Surprisingly, some of these companies offer versions that are entirely free. I've looked at as many of them as I could get my grubby hands on, and I've found a couple that might be handy to have on at least one computer in your department (if you can convince your IT department to install it). One caution, though, is that the free versions don't open .dwg files created by the newest versions of AutoCAD, so you'll also need the DWG TrueView utility discussed above to convert files to an older version of the .dwg format.
The two I suggest looking at if you want to go this route are NanoCAD Free and DoubleCAD XT. Both are essentially older versions of commercial CADD software that the manufacturers/publishers make available for free in the hope that users will like the software well enough to upgrade to the newest paid version. Both of them look and work enough like AutoCAD that anyone who has learned on AutoCAD should be able to start using them with virtually no learning curve.
DoubleCAD XT is put out by TurboCAD, which is a company that publishes the commercial program TurboCAD, a serious contended in CADD software for architecture and building engineering, as well as several programs aimed squarely at do-it-yourselfers and home designers looking for CADD solutions for generating house plans that more or less automate the creation of construction documents from schematic designs.
Despite this pedigree, I found a couple of quirks with DoubleCAD XT that are different enough from AutoCAD that I had trouble adapting to using it. I prefer NanoCAD Free. It's so similar to AutoCAD that there's virtually no learning curve at all for people who have learned on AutoCAD. Our town IT department was willing to install NanoCAD on my computer and the boss's computer in our department. We don't use it often, but it's nice to have. And it was very handy a couple of years ago when the boss decided to rearrange the office, because we were able to draw up the plan in CADD and see what would fit where, without starting to actually push furniture and cubicles around.
And, once in a while, we'll get a drawing from somebody who must have gotten a student copy of AutoCAD when they were in college 20 years ago and they fired it up to draw plans for their new deck or family room addition. So you get this file in AutoCAD .dwg format (because God forbid our intrepid hero should know how to export or plot to PDF) -- what can you do if you can't or don't want to just reject it outright?
Option 1 is that Autodesk, the company that sells (sorry -- rents) AutoCAD and Revit publishes a FREE utility that allows you to open AutoCAD files and view them, but not make any editorial changes. It also allows converting new .dwg files to be compatible with older versions of AutoCAD. It's called DWG TrueView and it's entirely free. It only runs under windows, but most municipal and county computer systems are probably locked into Microsoft anyway, so for most of us that's not an issue.
Option 2 is to actually install a program that can open and edit AutoCAD .dwg files. There are a number of commercial programs that can do that, all of them cheaper than AutoCAD itself. Surprisingly, some of these companies offer versions that are entirely free. I've looked at as many of them as I could get my grubby hands on, and I've found a couple that might be handy to have on at least one computer in your department (if you can convince your IT department to install it). One caution, though, is that the free versions don't open .dwg files created by the newest versions of AutoCAD, so you'll also need the DWG TrueView utility discussed above to convert files to an older version of the .dwg format.
The two I suggest looking at if you want to go this route are NanoCAD Free and DoubleCAD XT. Both are essentially older versions of commercial CADD software that the manufacturers/publishers make available for free in the hope that users will like the software well enough to upgrade to the newest paid version. Both of them look and work enough like AutoCAD that anyone who has learned on AutoCAD should be able to start using them with virtually no learning curve.
DoubleCAD XT is put out by TurboCAD, which is a company that publishes the commercial program TurboCAD, a serious contended in CADD software for architecture and building engineering, as well as several programs aimed squarely at do-it-yourselfers and home designers looking for CADD solutions for generating house plans that more or less automate the creation of construction documents from schematic designs.
Despite this pedigree, I found a couple of quirks with DoubleCAD XT that are different enough from AutoCAD that I had trouble adapting to using it. I prefer NanoCAD Free. It's so similar to AutoCAD that there's virtually no learning curve at all for people who have learned on AutoCAD. Our town IT department was willing to install NanoCAD on my computer and the boss's computer in our department. We don't use it often, but it's nice to have. And it was very handy a couple of years ago when the boss decided to rearrange the office, because we were able to draw up the plan in CADD and see what would fit where, without starting to actually push furniture and cubicles around.
