Ralph Grabowski compared AutoCAD 360 with "AutoCAD clones" in his latest upFront.eZine #842 in terms of DWG compatibility, mentioning our Budweiser.dwg compatibility test. There is one important point in the "trust" and "compatibility" aspect not mentioned in the review.
AutoCAD 360 is a view/review software and "occasional" 2D editor for DWG drawings. Unlike the non-Autodesk desktop "clones" it does not display the true contents of a DWG file directly. The DWG is interpreted in the Autodesk cloud and sent to (and from) the thin client (mobile client or web browser) basically as simple vectors. So any incompatibilites are just in the interpretation phase and can be fixed on the cloud server. And - which is more important - any entities which are currently not recognized by AutoCAD 360 are not damaged during editing and save-back, they remain untouched inside the DWG file. If you re-open the AutoCAD360-edited drawing in AutoCAD, all (all!) entities are displayed properly again. Plus the DWG remains in the genuine DWG file format.
Now try this in any of the AutoCAD fakes (copies, lookalikes) and your DWG will be damaged, unrecognized entities will be deleted.
Updated 27.1.2015:
Ralph Grabowski asks in the next upFront.eZine #843: "I am not sure what file corruption of drawings by clones has to do with display corruption by Autodesk software, which is used by engineers working outside of the office, who rely on what they are seeing to resolve problems with contractors on the job site."
Yes, I agree that any viewer software should display the file contents reliably and I hope Autodesk will fix this soon in AutoCAD360 - at least for 2D DWGs. But there is a difference in the trust - "trusting in what is currently displayed on my mobile device" (when I can double-check the real contents in desktop AutoCAD) and in "trusting that the original contents is not corrupted forever" (when you open/save a DWG in a clone CAD). Any not-fully-recognized 2D object in AutoCAD360 can be still edited properly and it will be properly represented inside the cloud-based DWG. Any DWG edited in a clone is quite probably corrupted for any future use (we have lots of customers complaining then about double "0" layers, draworder not working, failures on plotting, missing objects and other strange problems caused by non-genuine DWGs).
It is like a web page - you know that it may look (or behave) slightly different on your tablet but I doubt you will like the risk of corrupting the page for any future visitors.
