So I started playing with WS last fall. At the time it couldn't display Civil 3D objects very well. With the latest release it does, so long as you turn on "proxygraphics". Set it to 1 before you save and upload to the cloud. Then all civil points, and C3D alignments are displayed properly.
I can see some fantastic uses for this, especially if next release notes come true. They are saying that they'll activate the GPS chip so you can have realtime navigation within your plansets. Did I mention that the iphone 4s has both GPS and Glonass?
Currently I am uploading drawings to share with my field crew. Just for finding control alone is priceless. No longer do I have to send them out with numerous plots of varying scale so they can find primary control. Now they can see all control, even the hundreds of PK's set as temp control. They can zoom right in and find the existing topo point number of a stormdrain. Also i can sketch in areas of needed topo through the web interface and within seconds they can see it on their phone. They too can make edits, add notes, draw stuff, measure stuff, and see what our existing coverage looks like. If they add a note or have a question I can see it on the web app almost instantaneously.
Someday I can see our project engineers running this on a tablet and making design change notes digitally on a daily basis. Everything they do gets saved back to the cloud. The cloud saves every version as well so you can look at changes in a timeline format.
If anyone wants to look at a demonstration but doesn't want to create an autocadWS account just shoot me an email in my profile. I'll share a sample survey drawing with you. You don't even need to install the app on a mobile device, just check it out on the web interface. I will set permissions so that you can download the file but not allowed to make changes.
The problem with this...
is the screen size on the phone..It can get a little tough especially when you have gloves on!
on a tablet I can see this being muuuch easier to use.
The problem with this...
...you mean special iPhone gloves.
I have used autoCADws on iPhone for a while... It is good for viewing DWG on a phone but not much more. AutoDesk will never put together a surveying data collection system on Apple platform... Or any surveying data collection for that matter, and they need not waste their time.
Tim,
Have you done this with drawings that you have used point and label styles to annotate survey points that have been imported into a drawing? When I placed a drawing with labels in the Autodesk Cloud and opened it on iPhone the labels were gone. I tried the proxygraphics before saving and still had not labels. Any ideas on how to keep the labels?
Thanks for any advice,
Ken
All of my point styles and point label styles appear just as they are in Civil. I am using 2012, and do set proxygraphics to 1 before uploading.
I have WS ver 1.3, and do get a warning message each time saying that it does not currently support 3D objects. However all points and alignment labels show up just like normal. Also drawing new lines does osnap to the node if I hover over one. The older WS version did not display point labels correctly, or alignment labels correctly.
A couple of issues though that I've reported so far.
1. C3D alignment curves don't show as true arcs. Almost like the "viewres" needs to be set higher. Normal polyline curves however do show as true arcs.
2. Linetypes don't seem to be showing up at all. The WS app, draw pulldown does show that linetypes are supported however mine is always grayed out.
3. Point styles that are a block containing a hatch (think monument symbol) do not display the hatch. The proper symbol does show up though.
Tim,
Thanks for the reply. I do have WS v1.3 but was using C3D 2011, when I tried saving the drawing from C3D 2012 with proxygraphics 1 I now see the labels in WS. It seems as if 2011 is not doing the proxygraphics 1 thing. Also opening the file saved from C3D 2012 in C3D 2010 retains the labels as proxy graphics where as the file saved from 2011 lost the labels when opened in 2010. Problem solved, use C3D 2012.
Thanks,
Ken