Autodesk’s View On PDF

Many blogs are reporting the NOVEDGE interview with Mary Hope McQuiston, Head of Autodesk Extended Design Group. When asked about the difference between PDF and DWF she quoted a customer by saying, “With a PDF or GIF it’s like you’re getting a brochure of the design. DWF, on the other hand, is the design.”

Nothing is further from the truth and the Head of Autodesk Extended Design Group ought to know, unless she intends to blame the ignorant customer for her statement. A PDF file can contain a precise NURBS model of the design, and that too at a fraction of the original file size. In fact this is one of the hallmarks of PDF. And putting PDF in the league of GIF is plain and simple dumb, if not malicious.

I could have understood if this was a statement made by an external PR firm who sometimes have no clue of what they are talking about. Edelman recently summed up the history of AutoCAD into one sentence and in the bargain rewrote it completely.

I wonder what Adobe has to say about this.