From the course: AutoCAD 2026 Essential Training

Using AutoCAD drawings through AutoCAD Web - AutoCAD Tutorial

From the course: AutoCAD 2026 Essential Training

Using AutoCAD drawings through AutoCAD Web

- [Instructor] So here we are in a browser looking at the AutoCAD Web page. So I said the AutoCAD webpage, it should be the AutoCAD Web webpage, right? So basically, what we're looking at here is a page where we can now use AutoCAD in a web browser to go and view the drawing that we have saved to the cloud. Now, I just want to give you a quick heads up before we actually sign into AutoCAD Web. You can see there that you can sign in using your AutoCAD subscription. You can also create an account, and if you're a student, you can get student licenses of it as well. And you can see there, look, there you go, desktop, tablet, phone. And you can download the mobile app using the QR code on Google Play or on the Apple App Store. If I scroll down a bit though, you can also see here, it's online. So it's the core technology of AutoCAD in an online DWG editor and viewer. It's now the trusted, official online CAD program, and it's connected, so you can now draft with precision, speed and confidence from anywhere. But more importantly, you can also collaborate with other people from anywhere on your AutoCAD drawings. So I'm going to sign in, it'll now ask me, obviously, for my email address, which is there, and I hit next, and I'll just pop my password in. So basically, this is single sign on. So this is the same login that I use for all of my Autodesk stuff, so it's single sign on. So all I do is click on sign in there, and it will now sign me in to my AutoCAD Web account. So you can see there now, there's a lot of information going on and look, surprise, surprise, recent is there, and there's the most recent file, and that's the one that I recently saved. Now, when you are in AutoCAD Web, you can create a new drawing. So if I click there, I can use different templates, I can upload files, upload a folder from a local network drive, my hard drive, and so on. Now, I'm in AutoCAD Web. I can add other storage sources to this. So if I click on the little add storage source there, I can use Autodesk Docs, Autodesk Drive, I can use Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, or I can even browse to a local file location on my hard drive. Now, I'm not going to worry about all of those. I'm just going to obviously close that out because I'm just using my AutoCAD Web mobile folders. And the good thing is if I look there, recent, I can obviously see what I've recently used. And there you go. There's my Madison Cloud drawing. So I click on it and it will now open that up in AutoCAD Web. Now, the lovely thing about this is I'm not having to boot up a computer. I'm not having to worry about getting my laptop out of my bag. I could be in an internet cafe somewhere, and I could just quickly go and check a drawing, and I can just check what's on that drawing and what I need to do. Now, what I really love about this is the technology here is so, so similar to what you have on your desktop. So you'll notice we've got layers, we've got blocks. We've got any Xrefs that might be attached. We've also got a thing called traces, which we are going to touch in this chapter. We've also got activity insights as well. There are no insights available 'cause I haven't really done much with this drawing yet. So let's go back to properties there. So if I now select a dimension, you'll notice there the properties update, and it gives me the properties of the dimension. So it's a bit like the properties palette in the AutoCAD desktop. Very quick and easy. I can hit Escape to deselect as well. So you'll notice I've got various draw tools, various annotation tools, various modify tools. I've also got down here, I've got ONSAPS. There you go. There's all my ONSAPS, my running object snaps. I've got OTRAC on. I've got ORTHO. I can go into Polar there and set my angle if I want to. And also, here, I can go into my layout tabs as well. There's my layout tabs there like so. Now, you'll notice that things like fonts tend to change a little bit. Now, the reason for that is they've standardized on the fonts to allow the browser to work quickly and effectively. I can go back there to the model tab. I can also download the mobile version. I can open it in my desktop if I want to, and I can also share the file if I want to as well. It's incredibly useful. Up here, I've got Save and Save As. I've got Plot. If I go into settings, I've got various settings like tracking, snap and grid, units, navigation, all of that can be set up as well. So there's a whole plethora of things that you can do with your AutoCAD drawing when you're working in AutoCAD Web. Now, the layout here is similar in the mobile version, but obviously it's cut down. You can't have a massive application like AutoCAD running as it would on the desktop on a mobile device. But I have to say, I use AutoCAD Mobile on my iPad Pro all the time, and it is a fantastic piece of kit. It's really good. With the Apple pencil, you're actually drafting as if you're drawing on a notepad. It's really clever stuff. It works really, really well. So this is the interface that you have when you go into the browser-based version of AutoCAD, which is known as AutoCAD Web.

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