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by Jeff Moad, MA Editorial Staff
Posted on Saturday, July 29, 2006 12:30:00 AM Sign Up to receive Daily News Alerts in your E-mail Inbox    In an attempt to fend off challenges from competitors such as Adobe Systems Inc. and UGS Corp., Autodesk Inc. (San Rafael, CA) recently enhanced CAD viewing and collaboration tools based on its Design Web Format (DWF) file format, adding more robust workflow functions as well as tighter integration with the company's Inventor 11 3D mechanical design software. The enhancements allow users of Autodesk's collaboration tools -- originally called DWF Composer and later renamed Autodesk Design Review -- to receive Inventor files, make changes in those files, and have those changes incorporated into the original Inventor document. The same sort of two-way, round-trip collaboration is already possible between Autodesk's Design Review and AutoCAD products. The Autodesk upgrades are the latest salvo in an escalating competition among CAD and digital publishing software vendors to gain control of the market for CAD viewing and collaboration tools, which are used primarily by non-CAD users such as parts suppliers and plant floor workers. CAD vendors such as Autodesk and UGS (Plano, TX) have competed against each other in that market and were joined earlier this year by digital publishing giant Adobe (San Jose, CA), which rolled out a 3D version of its Acrobat application that can be used to view and annotate files from a number of CAD products. [Click to continue] |
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