Drawing Sync
Digitally signed app
Description
Drawing Sync equips Autodesk® AutoCAD® drafters and designers to synchronize and compare changes made to project drawings.
Specify a project folder to begin tracking history. You can then share a central location with others to begin co-authoring with your team. Everyone works on their own device and uses Sync Central to update changes.
Drawing Sync offers drawing patch, edit, and csv export tools that you can use as an individual. Worksharing is not required to use these tools.
Synchronize changes you and others make to project drawings
File synchronization that has been available for Revit projects with Collaboration Pro is now available for AutoCAD drawing projects. This is made possible by applying a custom merge solution1 for drawings that are modified simultaneously on separate devices.
Like Autodesk Collaboration Pro for Revit projects, you need to connect to the central location only when you sync (working occasionally connected).
View and compare drawings in version history
Even if you send out drawing files for edit or review as email attachments, drawing sync can help you identify changes.
As an individual, you use Sync Central to add a snapshot of your project drawings to history before sending the attachment. When the drawings are returned, from history you can access AutoCAD’s drawing compare feature. You can also view change details and merge using a drawing patch file.
As part of a team, you can view and compare both local and remote changes in version history. If you edit a drawing that was also changed on another device, with your permission, drawing sync can merge automatically. Or you can view the remote changes from history before deciding how to resolve conflicts.
Even if you are the only person editing drawings, setting up a central location can help you synchronize drawing projects between office, home, and presentation devices.
View drawing edit session and previous version changes
Has this happened to you? AutoCAD prompts you to “Save Changes” but you do not know what changes were made. Drawing Sync can show you everything that has changed. View changes graphically (DWG Compare) or to the database (dwp).
View changes for the current session, or with the previous save (bak). Database changes are reported in a drawing patch (dwp), which is a text file listing drawing entities and objects that were added, modified, or deleted.
The patch also includes an extended DBMOD variable, which you can use to determine what type of objects were modified. Did you simply zoom-extents? No need to save. Unnecessarily incrementing the version can be disruptive, especially if you are using a desktop connector.
Note: Drawing Exchange (DX) commands are available for you to use with any drawing. You do not need to set up history for a project or join a workshare to use them.
Access your complete drawing database
Drawing object data includes viewable entities, system variables, tables (layer, linetype, style) and non-viewable objects such as classes and dictionaries.
Drawing Sync allows you to view drawing data in tabular format. As an advanced feature, if you are experienced with drawing exchange format (dxf) you can edit the drawing snapshot.
New: Use the CSVOUT command to export your drawing database directly to tabular comma separated format. CSV (Comma-Separated Values) is a preferred format for AI consoles due to its extreme simplicity, lightweight structure, and universal compatibility with data tools and programming languages. DXF-CSV v1.0 spec is supported.
1The custom merge solution is available if at least one drawing has simple changes to AutoCAD-only entities. If custom objects were modified in both drawings an automatic merge cannot be performed. In this case, keep-mine and keep-theirs are available to resolve conflicts.
Note: This app uses a custom installer (and not the standard App Store installer).
