Use Project Center's compare feature to find changes that have been made between baseline and revised versions of drawings, project folders and files, document sets, or record copies. Compare is available from activity centers throughout Project Center as well as the Newforma Viewer.
Use the Compare Results window to compare any of the following:
Project files to other project files.
Project folders to other project folders, document sets, or record copies.
Document sets to other document sets, project folders, or record copies.
Record copies to other record copies, document sets, or project folders.
Two Word (.DOC) documents. When you use the Compare feature, the documents are opened and compared in Microsoft Word, and the results are displayed just like any other comparison made directly in Word.
External references are included as part of the compare criteria. When an external reference is different between two host drawings that are otherwise the same, the host drawings are shown as changed.
You can search for matching files (files that are the same or similar) before you compare a file to the baseline. Select Find > All Versions of This File from the Tasks panel of various activity centers to open the Search Results window to use this feature.
You can compare .TXT files.
Use the Newforma Viewer to visually identify differences between successive drawings or sets of drawings. It eliminates the time-consuming process of manually comparing drawings. By color-coding additions, deletions, and changes, and providing the ability to animate changes, the Newforma Viewer enables the members of the project team to focus their attention on important coordination issues and evaluate the quantity, cost, and scheduling impacts of design revisions.
You can compare any file format supported by the Newforma Viewer. When comparing CAD files such as .DWG, .DGN, and .DWF, the compare feature uses each drawing entity’s unique object ID to allow drawing entities that have not changed to be de-emphasized by coloring them light gray. If an object in a drawing changes, even if it is moved by the tiniest amount (1mm for example), it shows up as a change. Change tolerance enables you to ignore changes that are less than a certain size, a value you can set. Drawing entities that have been modified or moved a distance greater than the change tolerance are color-coded more prominently using a primary color. Entities that have been added or removed are also colored prominently to allow members to focus on the important changes in the revision.
When comparing graphical file formats such as .PDF or raster files that do not contain object IDs, or when comparing CAD files that are not successive versions of each other, you can use the Digital Light Table to graphically isolate and color-code the changes. The Digital Light Table does this by performing a pixel-by-pixel analysis of each file and color-coding the pixels that have changed.
When comparing .PDF or raster files, the size, position, and scale of the two files will most likely not be coordinated and you will need to align the two drawings before they can be effectively compared.
You can use Project Center's compare feature to track down and eliminate unintended or undocumented revisions that could otherwise lead to cost and time escalation associated with RFIs, re-submittals, and other actions to correct the mistakes. However, the time and effort required to compare dozens or even hundreds of drawings in a revised milestone might cause the team to abandon or short-cut this quality control measure.
This is where the Batch Print of Compare Results dialog box is beneficial. It allows you to set up an unattended batch compare processes to generate and output color-coded comparisons to a printer or to a .PDF file. Once the unattended process has completed, project team members can quickly scan the color-coded revisions to look for unintended or undocumented revisions.
Multi-version compare graphically displays the differences between three or more versions of a drawing. The compare animator allows project team members to dynamically transition between adjacent drawing versions for a clearer understanding of how the design has evolved over the project timeline. You can also output multi-version animation sequences as animated .GIF files from the Digital Light Table.
For information on how Compare handles external references, see How the Compare Feature Handles External References (XREFs).
● The
Compare Results window now shows
how much newer or older and smaller or larger the revised file is compared
to the baseline. For files with a status of Changed,
you can hover over the date to show a popup with the baseline value.
● When comparing multiple page documents in the Newforma Viewer, you can lock the pagination so that when you switch pages, both documents change together, as shown in the first example below, or you can click the lock icon to unlock them (indicated by the green unlocked icon) so that you can change the pages individually, as shown in the second example.
