AutoCAD Tip – Collaborating with team members - Part 1

By Dennis Collin

A few years ago, new functionality was introduced to AutoCAD, known as Traces. A Trace provides a safe space to provide feedback to a drawing without altering the existing drawing. The analogy is of a virtual collaborative tracing paper that is laid over the drawing that allows collaborators to add markups and comments on the drawing.

Traces can be created within the AutoCAD web app, mobile, or AutoCAD desktop application, and then sent to colleagues who can view the trace , comments and contents.

In the example below a drawing is being commented on within the AutoCAD Web app. A trace overlay is added, with the user’s login credentials displayed to identify the source of the comments.

As the trace is worked on notes and shapes can be sketched ready for the edits to be performed by a colleague using the AutoCAD Desktop app.

If the trace element is difficult to read then the trace’s transparency can be adjusted or turned off completely, to be restored later if required.

If markups are done manually on paper or a non-CAD platform then the document can be scanned, saved, or otherwise converted to a PNG or JPG format and then imported as a trace element via the import markup option. The import markup as a trace command is located on the traces panel on all platforms.

AutoCAD will intelligently align the manual scanned markup image to similar references within AutoCAD’s drawing file and additional notes can be added as required.

Once the markups are completed the marked-up drawing can be saved, along with the traces. The user tasked with the edits can either open the drawing from the Web App, and then choose to edit with desktop, or alternatively the traced drawing can be accessed directly from Autodesk Docs using the Desktop App. Autodesk Docs is a cloud storage technology that works in a very similar way to Microsoft’s OneDrive. A shortcut to a user’s storage is located under MS Window’s places panel, simply click on it and browse to push or retrieve files.

Once open in the Desktop App, the traces can be accessed, and the names of comment contributors can be viewed.

Should any additional traces be added to the drawing, a notification appears informing the user of the new trace.

Note: Traces are only supported in AutoCAD 2010 DWG formats or later and they are not supported in the DXF format. If saved to older formats or DXF the trace overlay information is lost.

The functionality of Traces and Markups are very similar across all AutoCAD platforms but there is some differences of behaviour and limits of functionality which can be seen in the table below.

All platforms can create, view and edit Traces, but only the Desktop App (Windows or Mac) can delete all traces from a drawing. In addition, only the AutoCAD desktop app for Windows has the new Markup Assist feature to automatically identify mark-ups. Hopefully, this will be added to the AutoCAD for Mac platform soon.

The Markup Assist feature I will cover in a future post.