DrawCompare

DrawCompare compares two DraftSight drawings to see differences between the entities they contain. These differences appear in a third drawing using color codes.

DrawCompare compares the bitmaps of the drawings at the bit level. Only visual changes are captured when you compare the drawings. For example, if you move an annotation 2mm to the left, this change is reflected in the comparison. However, if you change a custom property such as the Description, this is not reflected in the comparison.

Using DrawCompare

  1. Click Tools > DrawCompare.
  2. In the DrawCompare dialog box, for the Drawing 1 field, click Browse to locate a drawing.
    The Drawing 1 pane at the lower-left corner of the dialog box shows the drawing.
  3. Optionally, to change the color used to display the differences found in Drawing 1, click the colored box to the right of the Browse button and use the Select Color dialog box to choose a new color.
  4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 for Drawing 2.
  5. Click Compare Drawings DrawCompare_Compare_Drawings (DrawCompare toolbar).
    The Difference pane shows both drawings superimposed.
    To view details, click Zoom to Area Draw_compare_Zoom_to_Area (DrawCompare toolbar) and select the area to view. To view the entire drawing again, click Zoom Fit DrawCompare_ZoomFit.
  6. Optionally:
    1. To see only the entities from Drawing 1 in the Differences pane, clear the Additions check box.
    2. To see only the entities from Drawing 2, clear the Removals check box.
    3. To save the results shown in the Differences pane as a compared bitmap file (*.compare.BMP), click Save Results DrawCompare_save_result (DrawCompare toolbar).
    4. To open previously-saved DrawCompare results, click Open Results (DrawCompare toolbar) and navigate to the desired file.