New DWG Capabilities—Dropbox Develops Integration with Autodesk’s AutoCAD

We are playing catch up with our AU news but this piece of information is quite significant. Since 27 November 2018, Dropbox users will have new AutoCAD integration capabilities inside one of the world’s leading cloud file sharing platforms.

The new integration means Dropbox and Autodesk users can access DWG files anytime, anywhere directly from within Dropbox.

How the AutoCAD – Dropbox Integration Works

Basically, when you see your DWG files in your Dropbox directory, you can open them directly into the AutoCAD web app—no download or install required.

“By integrating more closely with Dropbox we’re giving users and teams even more power to create, design and make amazing things,” said Rob Maguire, vice president, AutoCAD Family Products. “We’re committed to delivering a seamless experience to creative professionals, architects, and engineers through this integration.”

An AutoCAD Dropbox Extension enables you to set this integration up quickly; users will have the ability to have Dropbox be their central file location. When you are working in the AutoCAD web app and save, it saves it to Dropbox, so you will consistently have up-to-date files.

01 – A view of Dropbox with the new AutoCAD integration. This is how you can launch AutoCAD web app directly from within Dropbox online in your browser.

Now when you hover your cursor over a DWG file in Dropbox, an “Open with” drop-down menu shows AutoCAD (web app) as an open option. Upon clicking the AutoCAD web app launches in a new browser window where the user can view and edit the drawing.

AutoCAD Fun Facts

Not only did AutoCAD for Mac 2019 and AutoCAD LT for Mac 2019 just get announced, but Apple showcased AutoCAD Mobile at its recent New York City hardware event where they introduced the new iPad Pros.

At the event, we heard “For the first time, Autodesk will be bringing the desktop engine of AutoCAD to the iPad. This will allow customers to view and edit files that contain hundreds of thousands of objects, with performance as fast as the fastest PCs.”

02 – The latest version of AutoCAD Mobile running on Apple’s brand new iPad Pro with A12X Bionic processor. This version runs the same exact AutoCAD desktop engine and the iPad Pro 2 offers more processing power than 90 + percent of all shipping conventional laptop computers shipping today. (image: screenshot from Apple event)

During Apple’s October hardware event, both Autodesk and Adobe announced that AutoCAD and Photoshop’s actual desktop engines were, respectively, running natively and with great speed on the iPad Pro.