Whose CAD Is It Anyway? An Interactive Workshop on the AutoCAD Mobile

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

- Your essential CAD tools now go wherever you go. With AutoCAD Mobile App, you get full access to any DWG files from wherever you are. So you can create, edit, measure, markup, and share drawings, all on the go. Wow clients faster. AutoCAD Mobile means less rework and fewer headaches, more precision, productivity, and time back in your day. Experience new essential mobile tools. Go mobile now. Simply select Upgrade in your app.

[END PLAYBACK]

VICTOR: All right. Hello, everyone. Thank you very much for skipping the keynote and coming to our show about AutoCAD Mobile. Might not be as extravagant and impressive, but it will be shorter and much funnier, we hope. For some of us. So a quick introduction, first. I'm Victor from the AutoCAD Mobile product team in Tel Aviv. I handle growth and analytics.

TIRZA: And I'm Tirza. I'm product manager on the same time. So today, I want to talk to you about our vision, the AutoCAD Mobile App.

VICTOR: We'll do that. We will do that. Is it better?

TIRZA: Now?

VICTOR: We'll speak up.

TIRZA: So the AutoCAD Mobile App is a relatively new product, in Autodesk terms. It's around five years old, but it is quickly maturing, thanks to the tireless work of our team back in Tel Aviv. It was envisioned mostly as the way to open DWG files on-site, grant view-only access to drawings, when the computer or AutoCAD desktop is not available.

VICTOR: But the product has grown a lot since then. Today, you can already access any DWG file on pretty much any mobile device, being tablet or phone, Windows, Android, iOS. You can access files from your cloud storage from your local device storage or just from an email.

And once you open those files, you can edit them and pretty much do almost anything that you would do on AutoCAD Desktop.

TIRZA: So, of course, not anything. It will still take time to compress all the essence of AutoCAD's 30 years of complexity and versatility, and figure out a way to fit it into the mobile device. But we're definitely getting closer with every biweekly version release.

VICTOR: So what AutoCAD Mobile, who is it good for? Of course, this app is not for anybody. It's not your average Twitter or Instagram app. But it is for anybody working in our architecture, construction, engineering, and design world.

For anybody working with AutoCAD Desktop, it's a necessary portable extension. It allows professionals to be much more versatile and much more responsive, when they can open and annotate files on site. It's also a great extension of your workstation, when you can open it and sync files around the office, in the meeting room, or just on your couch in the living room.

Most importantly, this mobile companion allows you to be productive and work continuously under any circumstance.

TIRZA: But it's also a completely stand-alone product that let's you complete small projects, and even establish new ones. Interior designers can draft on-site and even photos in real time. Amateur enthusiasts can plan and manage their entire renovation process without committing to the full desktop version. And surveyors are able to optimize their productivity significantly by connecting their measuring devices to the mobile app, and reinventing the entire core work process.

So how does it happen in real life? We could give you a very boring tutorial about the app. But we decided it would be more fun, instead, to take you out of this conference room and test the app on day-to-day scenarios.

Over the past year, we've met tons of our most devoted users to better understand the challenges they solve using the app. So today we will be those users, acting out similar challenges, dealing with them, and we'll use your help in dealing with the last challenge. And then we will get to play around the app, ask questions. Sounds good?

VICTOR: All right, so bear in mind that this will obviously include the two things that most product managers, and I think maybe audiences fear the most, which is live demos. And some very light amateur acting. So please, bear with us.

So in the first act, we will take you to the digital construction site. So we are at your typical site. Building a hotel, running about two months delay, construction noise and mess all around us. Time is of the essence. To do this bit, we'll ask to the stage one of our colleagues. She is our most veteran product manager on the team, please welcome Sivan.

So Sivan will help us by playing Jasmine. Jasmine, she is a supervisor coming to the site to oversee some process and give some notes and instructions. I will be the engineer, Ben. Ben is a ventilation consultant. He is old school. He is definitely kind of a pen and paper kind of guy.

And Tirza will play Lisa. So Lisa is also an engineer, she's a drainage system consultant, but she uses a iPad Pro with the AutoCAD mobile app, earlier in 2017. So let's see how it goes. But first, a quick word from our sponsors.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

- It's really helpful to be able to measure distances to kind of get an idea, and to check what they've actually constructed. You're out on the construction site and it's windy, and there's a lot of people around. You don't always have a desk to put these drawings down on.

So usually you're looking at it on the hood of somebody's car, or you're trying to hold up, if they're full-sized drawings, they're 36x24, or whatever, they're huge. And you're trying to hold them up, and they're all folded up and the pages are flying around.

So my favorite part about it is just how easy it is to pull up a model and move around. It's pretty easy to use the touchscreen without having a mouse, because on a laptop it's very difficult to pan around and avoided yourself, if you're just using a touch pad. They did a good job with using the zoom and pan features.

Well, it saved me time because I didn't have to print out drawings. Like when I have a meeting at 8:00 AM in Pittsburgh, and I'm flying out from Denver the night before, and I don't get in until midnight. I don't have to go all the way to my office in Pittsburgh, which is 30 minutes away from the job site, to print out PDFs.

[END PLAYBACK]

SIVAN: Hey guys.

VICTOR: Hey.

TIRZA: Hi.

SIVAN: Hey. So today, our tool will be focused on issues arising from the superposition of the ceiling and the floor interior design plans, and the ventilation system and drainage vertical systems. Hey Ben, how are you?

VICTOR: Hey. Good, good. Always happy to be here.

SIVAN: Great. I'd like to draw your attention to this area over there. Can you find the plan for this?

VICTOR: Oh, yeah. Sure. Let me see. That's upside down. OK, so I think it's that area over here, right?

SIVAN: Yeah, seems like. Well, there is obviously a mismatch between the ceiling plan and the suggested ventilation path.

VICTOR: No.

[LAUGHTER]

SIVAN: What do you think about placing it over there?

VICTOR: Wait, that can be right. Let me see. Oh, yes. Actually, you're right. That's our bad. So wait, let me mark this up real quick. OK. All right, so I marked up the drawing. So now I gotta run back to the office of my CAD technicians can fix the plan and bring out the new ones.

SIVAN: Oh, too bad you can't stay. I have some more comments. Perhaps it would be good if I had here a computer with AutoCAD installed on it.

VICTOR: Yeah, that'd be great, right? We don't even have Wi-Fi around here.

SIVAN: Anyway, updating the plan is a top priority. As the ventilation coordinator, I need to start to work next week. So you're free to go. I'll write my comments and I'll send it to.

VICTOR: All right, see you then.

SIVAN: Great, thank you. Hey Lisa.

TIRZA: How are you?

SIVAN: Great, how are you?

TIRZA: Great.

SIVAN: Great. Well, I think the current drainage system has a few areas where some shorter and more efficient sewage routes can be placed.

TIRZA: Where?

SIVAN: Take a look at here. This area. According to the drainage plan, the suggested routes here can be replaced with a shorter route. Do you want to add comments to your plan? Wait, where is your printed copy?

TIRZA: You know what? No need to travel around with a printed copy anymore, I have it all here.

SIVAN: Oh, wow. Are you able to edit the original DWG here on site?

TIRZA: Yeah, exactly. Let me show you. So this is the AutoCAD Mobile App. It actually allows you to upload, view, and edit drawings on-site.

SIVAN: Oh, awesome.

TIRZA: Here is the drainage system plan, see?

SIVAN: Oh. But tell me, we don't have a Wi-Fi connection here. If your 3G network wasn't available, could you still open to drawing?

TIRZA: Absolutely. The app allows you to pre-download drawings and make them available online. See? Awesome.

SIVAN: Oh, great.

TIRZA: So here's the drainage plan. Let's just open it. I imported it into my account in advance. So let's zoom into the relevant area here. Right, so as you suggested, this route here should be changed and deleted. So I can select it, and now I can perform a few actions on the selected item. According to your suggestions, I just erase it.

SIVAN: Oh, wow. It's just like having AutoCAD on the go.

TIRZA: Just like having AutoCAD on the go.

SIVAN: Great.

TIRZA: So now let's continue and add new object, the new path. Let's do it like setting up our layers. You can create new layers, use the layers palette. You can also work on existing layers. Let's just make the relevant layer the current layer.

Here it is. And now any new object I'm going to add will be added to this particular layer. So I'm going to use the [INAUDIBLE] tool here. And I can do it accurately with the help of the snapping points and keypad. Here it is.

SIVAN: So now the plan is up to date?

TIRZA: Yes, it's up to date. I can even spare a phone call and send the office a notification, or to you, via the design feed.

SIVAN: That would be great.

TIRZA: Yeah. So let's just add here the new path, for example. I can even point the relevant area in the drawing and share it with you.

SIVAN: Yes, that's my email.

TIRZA: Yeah, awesome.

SIVAN: Wow, it saves you so much time and energy.

TIRZA: Definitely.

SIVAN: Great.

TIRZA: So see you in a couple of days?

SIVAN: See you.

TIRZA: Thank you.

SIVAN: Bye-bye.

VICTOR: Thank you Jasmine and Lisa.

[APPLAUSE]

TIRZA: So what we did here, we found the relevant drawing, made it available offline, edited on-site, deleted object, added new ones, used the layers palette and the design feed feature to share with others.

VICTOR: Now what did we get by placing this new mobile capability in the hands of an engineer meeting with their supervisor on-site? First of all, some responsiveness. Any question that is asked is quickly answered, without the need to look through three or four different plans and drawings, without the need to go back and forth from the office to the site, and back and forth.

And most importantly, anything that happens around the site is still part of delivering within the pipeline in the project.

TIRZA: So for our second act, we'll take you to see the new life of an interior designer. I will be Fiona, a small office designer planning a kitchen renovation. For a young couple, the Bradys, Victor will be Mike Brady, meeting with Fiona to view the planning process. And to help us with this scene, we'll call again Sivan. She will be Mike's wife, Carol. But first, let's watch a couple of more commercials.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

- You need access on the go, and the ability to edit from wherever you are. AutoCAD Mobile App lets you access your drawings from a single cloud repository, including drawings stored in Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, and more.

Need to work offline? Download your files to your device, and even work without connectivity. Upgrade, and you also get increased file size support and extended storage space up to 100 gigabytes. So wherever you work, go crazy. Go mobile now. Simply select Upgrade in your app.

- OK. Well, the main things that I use AutoCAD 360 for are markups on the site, notations about what I'm observing, what I might want to do in a design, or just various notations. Which I used to do on paper, either by taking a full-sized plan or 8 1/2 by 11 prints of a plan, and then I would just write on them with pencil.

So I find that this is helpful because it has everything in one place on the drawing, and I don't end up shuffling through a bunch of papers trying to find where I put whatever. Because you can zoom in and out, I can fit quite a bit on there.

I also have liked the Insert a Picture feature. And that's particularly helpful on a larger site. Especially this site's pretty small, so it's pretty easy to remember what's here. But on a larger site, especially, I think that will be helpful. They have one coming up that's more like that.

[END PLAYBACK]

VICTOR: Hey, Fiona.

TIRZA: Hi Mike, how are you?

VICTOR: Good, good. How are you?

TIRZA: Crazy time for me. A lot of clients, a lot of houses to design, and we're brainstorming tonight. How's Carol?

VICTOR: So Carol's been a bit stressed, I've got to tell you. Ever since you talked us into making this kitchen redesigned last week, that's all she talks about. I think we just need to see one drawing so we know what we're dealing with. Do you know when this is going to be ready, so we can see something?

TIRZA: So don't worry about it, I have it on here.

VICTOR: Oh, nice. Wait, is that our kitchen?

TIRZA: Correction, this is your future kitchen. Just say the words, and I'll send it to your contractor.

VICTOR: So let me see. OK, Carol's going to love the stove over here. Wait, how wide is this window over here?

TIRZA: This window is about 2 1/2 feet.

VICTOR: You know what? That's going to be a problem, because we talk to our good friends, Bob and Susan, and they said, that to have a good feng shui around the kitchen, you've got to have the windows at least 5 feet wide. Can we do that?

TIRZA: So don't worry about it. We can just add a comment here. 5 fee, you said?

VICTOR: Yeah, that would be good.

TIRZA: Nice, no problem. Nice.

VICTOR: Very futuristic. OK, so one more thing. If we're in the area. We have this beautiful ficus, this sun-grown Japanese ficus.

TIRZA: A ficus?

VICTOR: A ficus, yeah, that we got from my parents.

TIRZA: OK.

VICTOR: We want to place it somewhere next to the window, can we do that?

TIRZA: Something like this, maybe?

VICTOR: Yeah, sweet. All right, that'll work.

TIRZA: Nice. So let us just update the drawing, and then share it with you, so you can have a look at it with Carol.

VICTOR: Wait, how?

TIRZA: Just download the AutoCAD Mobile App.

VICTOR: OK, yeah. Like you showed me last week.

TIRZA: Just like last week. OK, see you.

VICTOR: So I'll see you in the evening.

TIRZA: We'll talk later. So Andy, hey, I'm back at the office. Just met with the Bradys. Please add my comments to the drawing. It's in the Dropbox folder, have you seen it? Yeah, exactly. Great. So don't forget to share the file with Mike. Bye-bye.

[KNOCKING]

VICTOR: Honey, I'm home.

SIVAN: Mike, get in here! I've been stressed all day. Construction starts on Monday, and we need to have to plan for the kitchen. When is Fiona coming with the fixed plan?

VICTOR: Carol, Carol, Carol. Sometimes you're so outdated. I met with Fiona a couple of minutes ago. She showed me the new plan on her iPad Pro, and she said that she'll share the new drawing with me.

SIVAN: How?

VICTOR: On the AutoCAD Mobile App.

SIVAN: AutoCAD app?

VICTOR: AutoCAD Mobile App, yeah.

SIVAN: Well, did you tell her about the ficus?

VICTOR: Of course I told her about the ficus.

SIVAN: And then, email sound.

VICTOR: OK, so we got this email from Fiona now. All right, so she said view online. That's see that. Ta-da!

SIVAN: Oh wow, this looks amazing.

VICTOR: Right?

SIVAN: That Fiona really knows what she's doing.

VICTOR: She sure does. Actually, I told her that I would add a picture of her cool ficus, so let's see. Annotate, Insert Photo, From Gallery, that's our beautiful plant right here. Let's get it down, and move it. Place it right here. I think we're good, I think we can send it to the contractor.

SIVAN: All right!

VICTOR: Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

TIRZA: So what we did here, we found drawing quickly, reviewed some elements, made notations and changes, added new elements, shared the file, and added a picture.

VICTOR: Now again, what did we get by placing this new mobile capability in the hands of a designer meeting with their time? First of all, cross-platform collaborations between, not just two, but even three parties.

So Fiona reviews the drawing on the iPad. She then collaborates with her partner Andy at the office, who sees the drawing on his desktop. Then the drawing gets to Ben, to see it on his iPad with Carol. We get to see some real-time changes being made on the spot.

And most importantly, we got to re-imagine the workflow between the designer and their client, saving them tons of time, bringing us one step closer to our third and final act.

TIRZA: So for this last act, we want to dive into the workday of a surveyor, mapping out the standard room. This very ancient task was already significantly upgraded over the years, with the appearance of the laser-based measuring devices, like the Leica DISTO.

Today's surveyors arrived outside and used their Leica DISTO to quickly and accurately collect measurements of a room.

VICTOR: But then they have another step, right? They've got to go back to the office. They plug in their device into the desktop, they see the measures that they collected, and they create a model from those measures.

TIRZA: Sorry, but we wanted to take this step further, and create a continuous process. The surveyors get to decide, per their Leica device, to the app, and build the entire room model while measuring. One continuous process. No back and forth, no overhead.

VICTOR: OK, so for this next act, we want to map out this beautiful room, and create a quick model of this in the app. We'll need a couple of volunteers to help us. Who can help us out? That's one, and another one. And there's another one. Can you come to the stage, please?

This area that we'll call the stage. So one surveyor. What's your name, please?

AUDIENCE: Ivan.

VICTOR: Ivan. So there's your surveyor tag. And another surveyor here. What's your name?

AUDIENCE: Nadim.

VICTOR: Nadim. Thank you very much for helping us. So Nadim, you'll help Tirza building the plan in the CAD app.

TIRZA: This one, this one.

VICTOR: You want to do to this one?

TIRZA: Mm-hmm.

VICTOR: And we will be doing the measurement.

AUDIENCE: Sounds great.

TIRZA: So let's just start from the beginning. This is a new drawing created within the app. OK?

VICTOR: Can you just move a little bit, so everybody--

TIRZA: Sure. So first, we just need to choose one of the drawing tools, let's say polyline, and specify the first point, and give it a direction. Let's start with this direction.

VICTOR: So you want to do that?

AUDIENCE: Sure.

VICTOR: So where are we starting? From that window? From that wall?

TIRZA: Yeah, over there.

VICTOR: So let's go over here.

AUDIENCE: All right.

VICTOR: I think I just pointed to that direction.

TIRZA: Yeah. To the wall.

VICTOR: Yeah, just sit next to the wall. And just push that little red button. So everybody sees the laser over there.

TIRZA: Need to tap again.

VICTOR: Tap again. And all right, we have a measure, right?

TIRZA: Yeah.

VICTOR: You can step away. So you can see already, that's the exact measure of this wall.

AUDIENCE: Sorry, is that the DISTO?

VICTOR: Yeah, that's the DISTO.

AUDIENCE: This is Wi-Fi, right? It's connected--

TIRZA: Blueooth.

VICTOR: They come in different sizes and shapes.

TIRZA: So we can now measure this distance, for example.

VICTOR: From that wall?

TIRZA: From the last point.

VICTOR: So let's do that again.

TIRZA: So let's choose again the polyline tool, and give it a direction. That again. Awesome.

VICTOR: Excellent.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

TIRZA: Hit continue, if you want.

VICTOR: Who is going next?

TIRZA: Let's go next.

VICTOR: We'll do the floor.

TIRZA: Exactly, yeah. Nice.

VICTOR: We got it?

TIRZA: Yeah, we got it. Pretty much.

VICTOR: So that's like a markup of a measurement.

TIRZA: Measurement I mentioned, for example.

VICTOR: Thanks. All right, so we have the room. Thank you very much.

AUDIENCE: That's it?

VICTOR: Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

Thank you very much.

TIRZA: OK, so we were very happy to have this time today to show you the vision of the AutoCAD Mobile App, and show you a CAD user who is always connected. Who never says, oh, I need to find a drawing, then find the [INAUDIBLE], I don't have it with me.

VICTOR: Most importantly, we showed you a CAD user who is always connected with the most synced and most up-to-date drawing at their disposal.

TIRZA: They can complete workflows without leaving the site, the meeting room, or their couch.

VICTOR: Users enjoy a growing number of different input sources to that. From the cloud storage, to the Leica DISTO, and the Apple pad, and up to the camera phone on your mobile device.

TIRZA: Experienced CAD professionals working with the AutoCAD on their desktop can move between platforms, going from desktop to tablet to mobile and back to the desktop seamlessly, using cloud storage.

VICTOR: Our team continues to release new versions of the app to all three platforms about every two weeks. We keep improving the app with more features, more complexity, and even more seamless way to work continuously across all platforms.

TIRZA: We truly believe that the day is not far when every professional CAD user will use the AutoCAD app as part of their must tools set. And in some cases, choosing to work with the mobile app, instead of desktop.

VICTOR: So this ends the theatrical part of this presentation. We thank you very much, you've been a wonderful, wonderful audience. Now we want to move to a more practical part.

Now, who already has the AutoCAD Mobile App on their phone? Who has been using it for a while, and has some more advanced questions? OK. Yeah?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

VICTOR: For the next part, what we want to do, I think we have at least about 30 more minutes, or even more. So we have a few more team members here from the product team. We want to spread out around the room, help you guys play with the app. Whoever hasn't installed it or signed up yet, we'll help you do that.

Any account that you created for this session, if you haven't had an account up until now, we will ask you, like we did in the email, to send us your account, your username. We'll make it pro so you can enjoy this, for a while at least, all the pro capabilities. And for now, you'll be on trial and you'll be able to use all the pro features.

So any questions that you have now, we can create a few workflows, anything that you want to do. Though we have at least of three of us, two more here, another one over there for a while, another one here. So all team members of our product team.

TIRZA: I think there was one question over there.

AUDIENCE: I do have a question, though. As a request, [INAUDIBLE] the version of AutoCAD it syncs to is the most current version of AutoCAD? Is that correct?

TIRZA: It syncs to?

AUDIENCE: Like if I created a drawing, and let's say that it saved in 2018--

TIRZA: No, it's not synced automatically to the AutoCAD desktop.

AUDIENCE: No, no, no. I mean the version that it's saved as.

TIRZA: It's, I think, by default, AutoCAD 2013 and higher.

AUDIENCE: 2013, OK. Because I was just wondering, if I'm using 2015--

TIRZA: It's OK.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

AUDIENCE: OK.

VICTOR: Plus also, we have a couple of iPads here. So if anybody wants to play around with the app, not on a small mobile device, but on an iPad Pro. We also have a couple of Leica DISTOs here. So this is basically your time. We have at least 30more minutes.

AUDIENCE: What about your scenario, so you had somebody email you the drawing, and you're going to add the picture of a ficus. Can you do that on the free? Or do you need to have the--

VICTOR: First of all, once you install the free, and you start the trial option, for the first week you have all the features that the pro users have. To annotate, and--

TIRZA: As a free user, you can share drawings, but you cannot add any object. You only have viewing and measuring.

VICTOR: And also important to say, the fact that we got the drawing in an email. It's just kind of a notification. When you click it, it opens the drawing inside the app, so it is synced with anybody who is viewing it on storage, and et cetera.

AUDIENCE: So we have the [INAUDIBLE] files? Does it open the [INAUDIBLE] files?

TIRZA: Yeah, definitely.

AUDIENCE: And could you save it as a PDF?

TIRZA: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

TIRZA: Sure. You can just create a plot of a PDF file.