It hasn’t been long since we launched our project, and we already have a new version for you.

Project Butterfly began as a start-up, and after we were acquired we decided we keep our start-up spirit. That means frequent version updates, and close relations with our users.

We frequently check all your questions, suggestions and quirks regarding Project Butterfly. When you open up Project Butterfly today you will get all these goodies:

• Patricia and Tom needed support for displaying AEC walls and objects, and they got it.
• Paul asked us to edit an arc’s radius.

• The same Paul also wanted to draw arcs from within the polyline tool.

• Nir wanted us to implement more snapping points, such as midpoint, center, and extension. This was also mentioned in Kenneth’s video (at 2:30)

• Nir also wanted a “P” keyboard shortcut for pan.
• Jean-Paul didn’t want his browser to open a new window when downloading a DWG.
• Satish asked for panning with the middle mouse button.
• Martyn asked for a way to un-share files in the drawings section.
• We also added right-click menus at Ananth‘s request. We also made this possible in the Drawings screen.

The winner of our feature request is Add New Layers.

You can all expect that to be implemented very, very soon. Our thanks go to everyone that gave their votes.

Keep your feedback coming, we feed on it!

Asaf Sagi
Product Manager

Does this look familiar?

Wouldn’t it be nicer to have just one file, and it would include all the different versions it? It is nice, let me tell you.

I kind of spoiled it for you, but Project Butterfly has just that.

Ever tried looking for a specific revision you made to a staircase sometime during April? You had to open, close, open, close a large number of DWGs. Butterfly eases and speeds up this process. How about that?

In Project Butterfly you have a single file for each design, and all the changes that were made on it over time are saved onto the drawing Timeline. The Timeline keeps track of your versions and all discussion carried over it during co-editing or review.

Changes that were made to the drawing in Butterfly also show up as trackable events:

Every change made in Butterfly, whether it’s from a share, co-edit, review or just editing yourself – will appear as an event which you can track. If you import a new version after editing in AutoCAD, it will make itself the newest version on the Timeline and you could go back in time to previous versions – but it will not show you the changes made, event by event. We realize that a version comparing feature is valuable to you, so we are currently working on that too.

Have a wonderful weekend, all.
Asaf Sagi,
Product Manager.

Autodesk’s Project Butterfly makes it possible for Mac users to edit CAD drawings for the first time. What was until recently an uncharted territory is now publicly available, and for free.

In short, Project Butterfly from Autodesk is a Web-based application that enables CAD editing without any installation or download of any kind. Apart from web access, Project Butterfly has features that accelerate the design process by allowing multiple users to work on the same drawing simultaneously or separately. Read more in our first post.

Because Project Butterfly is Web-based, it can run on Mac and Linux just as it does on a PC, the traditional platform for CAD editing. Project Butterfly can also run on every browser, as long as it has Adobe Flash installed.

Are you a designer with a desktop PC but travel with a Macbook?
Are you a professional but your clients have Macs?
If one of the above applies to you, then try Project Butterfly.

Send us your thoughts!

Iris Shoor
Sr. Product Manager, Project Butterfly.