Autodesk Design Review + Project Freewheel = ubiquitous reach

You can supplement your use of Autodesk Design Review with Project Freewheel, so others without Autodesk Design Review (or any other Autodesk application) can participate in the review process using just their browsers. Let's say you have a project where nine people are on Windows and the tenth is on a Mac? How can you get that tenth person involved? Project Freewheel is the answer. The ShareNow add-in for Autodesk Design Review makes this easy.

Autodesk Design Review is our application for markup and measurement associated with an electronic review process. Autodesk Design Review is based on DWF files which can be published from all Autodesk design applications. So regardless of whether you are an AutoCAD, Inventor, Revit, or other design application user, you can apply a consistent electronic review process. You can even create DWF files from non-Autodesk applications using the DWF Writer. Your team can learn one application and be able to participate in a design review process that is independent of where the design data originates.

Though this process works well for many companies, there are situations where users cannot install Autodesk Design Review to participate in the process. These cases involve users who do not have proper rights on their computers, are on operating systems like Linux where Autodesk Design Review does not run, or on hardware not directly supported by Autodesk Design Review such as the Apple Macintosh. For these cases, it is possible to combine the best of two worlds: Autodesk Design Review and Project Freewheel.

The first step is to obtain the ShareNow Add-in:

To facilitate sharing design information directly from Autodesk Design Review, you can download and install the ShareNow Add-in for Autodesk Design Review. This lets you publish designs to Project Freewheel right from Autodesk Design Review with the click of an icon. This is similar functionality to what ShareNow provides in AutoCAD, Inventor, and Revit. Now Autodesk Design Review users can conveniently have the same experience.

To recap: When you select the Freewheel item of the File menu of Autodesk Design Review:

• If you have not installed the ShareNow Add-in, Autodesk Design Review invokes your browser and navigates you to the Autodesk Labs site so you can download and install the add-in.
• If you have installed the ShareNow Add-in, Autodesk Design Review publishes your design to Project Freewheel, invokes your browser, and navigates you to Project Freewheel where you can see your design and share it with others.

Allowing the design review process to extend to places where an installed Windows-based application does not apply is alive in the lab.