Publishing Autodesk Civil3D Data into a 3D Web Viewer

I recently ran into a situation where I needed to allow multiple people access to a DWF file. You can easily email the file around to people, then they would need to install the free DWF viewer available on Autodesk website. From there they can open the file and view.

But what if that is just too many steps for the situation? Autodesk has a product called Autodesk Freewheel and can be found here. This allows you to post content to DWF files that are stored out on the web. Below are a couple of examples of these. The first is a 2D drawing package from the Autodesk Freewheel site. The second is an example of a 3D DWF I created from Civil3D with both Civil3D objects and basic AutoCAD objects, then published to a 3D DWF file.

In adding the file to the web, I first attempted using Google Docs which turned out to be unsuccessful. Google Docs which creates a hyperlink that no longer contains the DWF file name and only allows for the file to be downloaded for viewing. My next attempt was through Dropbox, which does work. I placed the file in my public folder and copied the link to the file. Dropbox also creates a separate hyperlink, but keeps the file extension allowing for Autodesk Freewheel to access the file.





Please note on the Autodesk Freewheel page that within the hyperlinks additional code is needed to set the view to start point. For 3D DWFs this can be quite nerve racking trying to set the view where you want it. Here is a good workflow I used to set the starting view.

1. Use Mozilla Firefox for your internet browser.
2. Load the viewer onto your webpage, then go view the webpage through Mozilla Firefox.
3. Set the view using the viewer to how you want it to start.
4. Right click on the view and go to "This Frame, View Frame Info" as shown in the image below.
5. When the window pops up, go to Media and browse through the view links until you find the last full path, as shown in the image below. This will be the settings for your current view.
6. Right click, and copy the path.
7. Update the path on your web page to the copied path. Note be sure that the beginning path first calls up the Autodesk Freewheel web program (ie. Everything before "path=", your model path should follow the "path=").
8. Go and verify that the page loads correctly.

STEP 4

STEP 5

Autodesk Freewheel also allows for a free rendering service that provides a link to your DWF model. Here is a sample of my 3D DWF rendered through the model.