For those of you who use Design Review in your workflow, I
thought it would be helpful to pass along this information that landed on my
desk.
With the release of the 2014 set of products, Design Review
was not included. That left some of our
customers asking the questions about its future. It is true that Autodesk has not updated
Design Review 2013 and it looks like it may be the last version we see. Autodesk 360 is getting more and more funding
lately, and it looks like it is getting pushed hard. This seems to make sense because Design
Review is a free product and Autodesk doesn’t recoup their investment of
resources on it. Autodesk 360 is a
subscription benefit.
Here is a link to the Autodesk Discussion group where a user
posted a question about Design Review. This
post is quite a lengthy discussion on the matter, so it is evident this will
affect a number of individuals.
I want to direct your attention to page 4 of this forum. Scott Sheppard, a Program Manager with
Autodesk Labs posted this comment: Thank
you for the question. I am not here to delude anyone. If you want an electronic
review process, given the current state of Autodesk 360, Autodesk Design Review
is still the way to go. But the original question was is Design Review being
discontinued, and the answer is yes, it will eventually be replaced by Autodesk
360. Until that time, the 2013 version is available for download from the
Autodesk site and works with the 2014 product line since the DWF format did not
change.
I personally translate this to mean that the folks over at
Autodesk are currently putting all their effort into Autodesk 360, but Design
Review will be hanging around in the meantime.
Additionally, it is important to note that Vault uses DWF files and we
are currently assisting with Vault implementation in multiple companies. Remember that Design Review still works with
the 2014 product line and still provides a great benefit to the daily workflow
of designers. Rest assured that to
powerful tools provided by Design Review will continue on in Autodesk 360 in
some manner.
A concern the team at Autodesk is currently working to
resolve is that companies want to maintain control of files on their own
servers and is working on developing solutions with regards to this issue. Right now, the plan from Autodesk is to keep
Design Review 2013 available as a free download. They will only put out updates as
necessary.
Hopefully this will help you understand that even though the
future for Design Review is somewhat undetermined at this time, the tool set it
provides will continue forward in some form or another within Autodesk 360.
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