Shareware Review - January 98

Product: WHIP 3.0

Author: AutoDESK

Contact: http://www.autodesk.com/

UPDATE:  The latest release of Whip is 4.0, I don't even know if 3.0 is available anymore...  Webmaster, 25 Jun 00

Whip 3.0 is a far superior viewer than its predecessors. It is build from the same high performance graphics technology that powers AutoCAD Release 14 and 3D Studio MAX. In a nut shell, the Whip viewer allows you to view drawings that were created using AutoCAD release 13 and 14 on the internet's world wide web. Once a drawing (.DWG) is converted to the Drawing Web Format (.DWF) either using the built-in capabilities found in release 14 or the Internet Publishing Kit plug in (see shareware review December 1996) drawings can be posted on the Web. The Whip viewer allows you to not only view AutoCAD drawings but it has full, real time, pan and zoom functionality as well layer and view manipulation.

DWF supports hyperlinking, so that vectors or areas in a drawing can be made active links to a vendors web page. When a drawing is on a web page the user can hold down the CTRL and drag the DWF from the Whip viewer viewer into a running AutoCAD window. If the associated DWG file (that was used to create the DWF file) in the same directory as the DWF, that DWG is inserted into the current AutoCAD session. Once you are viewing a drawing on the internet you can simply click on the hyperlink to shoot off to the linked site. The Whip driver also has a built in URL highlighter. This will allow a user to quickly see where a hyperlink is. The full view function places the DWF on the entire viewable area of your web browser which makes looking at a DWF file much like looking at a live AutoCAD session.

The Whip 3.0 is now available for use with the Netscape Navigator version 3.0 or higher and the Microsoft Internet Explorer version 3.0 or higher. It loads up fast and easy once it is downloaded from the Web and you are given the option of which browser you need to have the plug in added. If you have already visited our Command of the Month page, you may have noticed the page taking a little longer to load, this is because if the browser you are using does not have the current version of Whip and it has been automatically downloaded.

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