The new Drawing Compare palette allows you to compare the current drawing with another one. E.g., Understand modifications made by a colleague, compare two options for the same project, show before and after, etc.

Compare two versions of the same drawing with ARES Commander

ARES Commander allows us to compare two versions of the same drawing, through the “DRAWING COMPARE” tool, to know what the differences between them are. Let’s see how it works. We have 2 drawings that are identical copies. Now we are going to open the drawing “B” to make changes. For example, we are going to remove geometry with the “Delete” command. Obviously now the drawings are different. We save the changes and close this drawing.

We now open the version “A” of this drawing, to know the differences with respect to drawing “B”.For that, from the MANAGE tab, we select the “DRAWING COMPARE” command. Which opens the palette related to this command, where we can load the drawing “B”. We select this icon …… and the comparison process between drawings begins.

As you can see, it indicates SOME ELEMENTS which are different. In this case, the elevations and the table, which we had removed before drawing “B”.With these arrows, we can navigate between the differences detected. When going from one to another, ARES Commander will show it centered on the screen. Among the options for comparing drawings, we have the possibility, for example, to change the revision cloud shape from “RECTANGLE” toa “POLYGON” type.

We can also determine if we show it or not. Even vary its size. Or, modify the color. We can also distinguish with a certain color, those entities that have no difference between the drawings compared. We can select a color to distinguish the entities that are only in the current drawing …While we can choose another color for entities that are only in drawing “B”, in this example.

Compare drawings in DWG and DXF format

Also emphasizing that we can compare drawings in DWG and DXF format. Now we are going to make changes to the main drawing, that is, drawing “A”. For that, we are going to eliminate some entities. We draw a rectangle. We create a Hatch inside the rectangle. With these changes, there are few differences between DRAWING”A” and “B”.

We will use “REFRESH” to update the changes. As we can see, we distinguish the area where THEdifferences appear. In addition to being able to see what are the entities that belong to one drawing and another, thanks to their colors. In this way, you can see at the same time, the entities related to drawing “A” and “B”. When we finish the comparison, we can return to the “current” drawing, using the “TOGGLES THE COMPARISON” icon. So we can focus only on the current drawing without having to see the other drawing we use to compare them.

With the “DRAWING COMPARE” tool of ARES Commander, the chances of error between versions of the same drawing are reduced. You may use it to understand the changes made by someone else. Another use case would be to compare two similar drawings such as for example two different levels of the same building. Alternatively, you could use this to compare different ideas for the same project. For example two ideas fro the same architect for your housing project. Learn more about the new features in ARES Commander.