PDF Viewer – www.adobe.com

If you don’t have a viewer for PDF files, download a free one here.

To publish drawings as a PDF, you will need to purchase a full PDF writer or distiller also available from Adobe. PDF writers and distillers allow you to print to a PDF file by selecting your PDF writer instead of your regular printer.

eDrawings Viewer – www.solidworks.com

Solidworks’ standard, free viewer for viewing eDrawings. The eDrawings viewer also supports viewing of native Solidworks files, as well as DWF and DWG files from Autodesk applications. ProEngineer, Catia, IntelliCAD, AutoCAD, Unigraphics, Inventor and others all have eDrawings publishers available.

DWF Viewer – http://usa.autodesk.com

This free viewer from Autodesk enables the viewing and printing of their web format DWF files published from Autodesk applications.

DWG Truview – http://usa.autodesk.com

Another free viewer from Autodesk. This one has more features such as the ability to switch layers on and off, a full print/plot engine and it can publish DWG files into DWF format. This program is a large download, so a good internet connection is recommended.

Spinfire – www.actify.com

Spinfire is a fully featured viewer that supports all files from all the popular CAD packages. Particularly good for viewing and manipulating 3D models and assemblies. A free evaluation version is available to download from the Actify site. To view files in their native file formats, you will also need to download the required importers. Also available from the Actify site is a free reader, but models and drawings must be published in their .3d file format to view them.

Brava Viewer – www.bravaviewer.com

This free viewer is listed here as it is one of the few that supports viewing of Protel files from PCB designers.