Project Freewheel: Share Your Design. Start a Session.

In my article on the 3D/2D ShareNow Add-in for AutoCAD, Inventor, and Revit, I depicted how a design can be easily shared from AutoCAD, Inventor, and Revit.

This is as simple as one click. With the traditional method of using Project Freewheel, first you need to publish your design to DWF, select a file name, and save it to your local hard drive. Then you invoke your browser, navigate to the Project Freewheel site, click on Freewheel File->Open, and select your local file. With 3D/2D ShareNow: you don’t need to export to a local file; you don’t need to come up with a file name; you don’t need to figure out how to get a published file on a web site. Instead you share designs without emailing big PDF or DWF files. Since the design is stored once on the Project Freewheel web server, only a URL needs to be emailed and shared. Everything about the process is much more efficient.

Once you have uploaded your design to Project Freewheel, it is time to collaborate.

Typically the design application user starts a real time collaboration sharing session. The others join. All see the same view of the design in their browsers. Then the fun begins.

Many of you have used tools like WebEx. Perhaps you have fussed with "who's driving?" with clicking on buttons to transfer session control from one user to another? Project Freewheel is based on a phone conversation model. Both people can talk at the same time but rarely do. People take turns. Such is the case with real-time collaboration sessions with Project Freewheel. Any participant can pan or zoom. Any participant can make a markup. Any participant can delete a markup. We assume people are going to play nice. Is the result chaos? Or ease of use bliss? Please tell us what you think: labs.freewheel@autodesk.com.

Fostering easy to share design data and real-time collaboration is alive in the lab.