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Hi all. I'm sure that this question has probably been raised countless times over; I can't find any solution, so please accept my apologies in advance. I have AutoCAD at work and on my desktop at home, but only True View and Design Review on my laptop. I need to work from my laptop and need to view acad dwgs; that's it, but I need the external references (xrefs) loaded within dwgs too. Other than etransmitting etc is there a way/program to simply open an acad dwg and be able to see it? Even as an uneditable entity/image or something? I just need to see it - from the .dwg file itself; no PDF or anything like that. Thanks! Michael

I am a big fan of the Viewbase functionality introduced in Autocad 2012, (which has subsequently been greatly improved in Autocad 2013) but was disappointed the first time I excitedly sent a Viewbase generated drawing to a coworker on an earlier version of Autocad, as she was unable to read it. I just figured out, that as long as recipients have downloaded the latest version of the free DWG True View software from Autodesk they will be able to read Viewbase images. I have erroneously warned in a number of posts on the forum that those without Autocad 2012 would be out of the loop, should they receive drawings generated with this functionality, due to the lack of retro-compatability. Fortunately, I was only half right, just make sure that all recipients have downloaded the latest free version of DWG True View, and all will be good in the 'hood. Now that Autocad 2013 has been released, bear in mind that the default file format is new for 2013, and that earlier versions will not be able to open files which have not been saved to earlier compatible file types. DWG True View 2013 will enable, as previously stated regarding DWG True View 2012 recipients to open and read drawings in file type 2013. If you receive such files without Autocad 2013, you can open them in DWG True View 2013. Should you want to you can then save them to another earlier file type, although the VIEWBASE functionality will not survive the transition to the earlier version.