Because the drawings are detailed, the viewing method must allow for zooming into an area and panning around the drawing. A review of different viewing approaches is provided below. Viewing Native Formats. Using a viewer that can read files in their native format is compelling because it removes the conversion step and requires that the utility keep only the native version of the drawing. The following viewers are capable of viewing the native file formats.
All products have the capability for zooming and panning the files.
One disadvantage of the other alternatives is that they only support AutoCAD versions 12 through 14 DWG files. AutoCAD files may be viewed without conversion. This probably is not a major issue since if the utility ever updates these files, they would probably want to convert them to a new format anyway. Comparing screen resolution, Autovue provided a more clear presentation of the same file when compared to Quickview. CAD Viewer Light and CAD Viewer Pro stand alone as Java applets, which means that the user does not need a plug-in installed on their computer.