One of the fundamental features in Project Butterfly is its co-editing feature. People have been discussing it in forums and blogs, and we would like to present to you the key benefits of the feature.

What is it?

Co-editing is the feature in Project Butterfly that enables two people to edit the same drawing simultaneously.

Reasons to use co-editing:

• It speeds up the process of designing, when another person’s input it necessary. For instance, it’s very hard to put into words a request to change the geometry of a complex wall, or plumbing.
• You can start a co-editing session when you don’t have enough time to meet in person. For example, if you need to discuss a design with a colleague in another state, or when your schedule is just full and can’t afford the time to travel to another city.
• It eliminates the need to redraw changes that have been discussed in an in-person meeting, or changes you received in a separate DWG file. Ever had someone send you their input on a DWG after you’ve already updated your version of the same drawing?
• The documentation of the session – changes and chat history – is stored and you can view it at any time, via the Timeline (ribbon tab).

Why it’s so easy and simple:

• Both sides of the session see the exact same view of the drawing – such as pan, zoom, layers, stylesheets and fonts.
• The recipient side doesn’t need a Butterfly account of his own. He just joins in the session from an invitation you send to him.
• Your recipient doesn’t need any software or files (i.e. you don’t have to send him the DWG or anything else).

Sounds good, right? It is.

How to start a co-editing meeting? [see video]

1. Open your drawing in Butterfly
2. Click on “Co-edit” in the bottom-right widget.
3. Enter your recipient’s email address.
4. Click “Send”. Voila!

Now all you have to do is wait for your recipient to join in, and you’re good to go.

Did you have a successful co-editing session? Tell us about it in the comments, or contact us.

Asaf Sagi
Product Manager, Project Butterfly

Hello everyone,

We hope you are having a good productive time working with Project Butterfly. Have you tried co-editing yet? It’s pretty magical.

You might not know that, but the Butterfly team is always working on new features and developments to make your online CAD experience the best as possible. We upgrade Butterfly every few days, based on feedback we receive from you, our audience!

We need your help in guiding us, we want to know what you need in Project Butterfly. We are committed to give you answers on any feature you might want. We will try implementing them as soon as possible, and will update you on our blog.

Examples for features:

• “Can you allow creating custom hatches?”
• We have already implemented the zoom keyboard shortcut. Try it!

Use your imagination, tell us what you think!

Asaf Sagi
Product Manager, Project Butterfly

You already know that Project Butterfly enables you to share drawings with people you know by sending them an e-mail invitation.

But what if you don’t know their email address?
What if you want to publish a certain drawing for the public to see? Post a link on your blog, Twitter, Facebook or in an IM.

I want to share with you a beautiful drawing of an intercity rail car.
Click this link to view it, or click the photo:

Isn’t it amazing? An electric car with the elegance of a steam train.
Those of you who don’t have a Butterfly account were also able to view it.

How do you do it?

Open your drawing in Butterfly, go to the Share tab, and click the rightmost button – “Get link to share”. In there, you can set whether your drawing will be open for viewing only, or also for public editing. Then copy the link and put it anywhere you like.

Let us hear your thoughts! Comment on the post below.
Go to Project Butterfly

Asaf Sagi
Product Manager, Project Butterfly

Welcome to the Autodesk Project Butterfly blog.

Project Butterfly is a new Web CAD application from Autodesk that lets you edit and share AutoCAD drawings online from a Web browser without having to install or download anything.

Project Butterfly provides features that help you accelerate and improve the design process, bridging the gap between you and the people you work with.
Here are just a few things that make Butterfly an excellent companion:

Edit and Access: With Project Butterfly your AutoCAD drawings are available to you from anywhere. You can open them and even edit them from any computer, using just a Web browser.
Project Butterfly’s editor is powerful and accurate while being easy to use, even for non CAD professionals.
Of course, you can download your drawings back to your computer after making changes to them.

Sharing: Sending files is a thing of the past. With Project Butterfly, you can have your colleagues, clients or friends view or edit your drawings online by sending them an invitation. Just like you, they open them up in their browser, so they don’t need CAD software or the drawing files. In fact, they don’t even need to have a Butterfly account, they’re like guests in your drawing. No copies of your drawing are created in the sharing process, so any changes your recipients make are applied directly to the drawing, so you don’t have to manage multiple files and different versions.

Meetings: Invite other people to an online meeting, where both sides discuss and edit the drawing in real-time. Yes, both sides can edit the drawing simultaneously.
You can control whether participants can edit the drawing or only view it, by setting permissions. As before, you can invite anyone to co-edit with you. Your participants don’t need a Butterfly account or any software.

Reviews: Reviewing in Butterfly is easy. You can start a review right from the drawing editor, and you don’t have to send any files. You invite your recipients into the drawing environment, and in it they can edit and annotate the drawing.
When they’re finished, you can track their changes step by step. Your reviewers are not restricted to markups which you then have to re-draw, but can easily make the changes themselves. Spend less time sending files, interpreting and implementing comments – spend more time designing.

Documentation: Each drawing in Project Butterfly has its own timeline which allows you to instantly view all past versions, reviews and meetings – so you don’t have to dig up old e-mails or create periodic backups of your drawings.

The purpose of this blog is to give you, our community of users, an opportunity to communicate with the development team. We want to answer questions and get feedback and ideas that will shape our product. Our goal is to make your online CAD experience the best possible.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Tal, Iris, Asaf and the rest of the Butterfly team.

Watch the Project Butterfly overview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50tb8QSxHIQ

For more videos, visit our YouTube channel.