At CAD Camp I had a chance to talk with Heidi Hewett and a gentleman (I'll call him Ted), who was having a problem publishing archived sets.
Here is Ted's problem in a nut shell.
- Ted and his company need to print out archived legacy projects from time to time so some of the page setups may not be up to current CAD Standards.
- Archived projects are set up for obsolete plotters and therefore will not publish well without creation of a new named page setup.
- Creating a named page setup, importing it into each file and layout to make sure that it works, is time consuming and tedious.
- Sometimes people will just plot without checking to see if the sheets are configured properly. This wastes valuable paper and time when things go wrong.
My suggestion was the increasingly valuable DWF (Drawing Web Format not Divorced White Female as was the joke at Autodesk University this year) file in conjunction with the Sheet Set Manager.
By creating a new Sheet Set and importing the legacy files you gain access to the very powerful publish to DWF command. This command will publish the imported layouts to a single multi-page DWF using whatever the current page setup is. But, it will replace the assigned printer/plotter with the "DWG to DWF.PC3" driver removing any problems with assigned but non-existent plotters.
With that accomplished the DWF file can be opened with the free Design Review software or viewer and reviewed to make sure that the file has plotted correctly. (Think about it as a mass "print preview" option.)
If Ted is using Design Review and a sheet does not look correct then he can just remove it from the DWF file, fix the error, plot it to a single DWF, and insert it into the set in it's proper place.
With all errors fixed, and the set looking good ,Ted can just select the print option from the File menu in Design Review and choose from any current printer or plotter on the system including a PDF maker. (PDF files printed from DWF seem to be much smaller as a rule for some reason. So there is another advantage.)
When the process is done the DWF file can then be deleted if it is unwanted. My suggestion would be to to place the DWF file in the archive with the cad files so that it can be printed again at a later date without repeating this whole process.
This is the process that we use in my office all the time because it help to catch those little printing errors that are always cropping up without having to waste paper and toner.
I hope that you have all enjoyed this little tip and found it useful. If anyone has a question or topic that they would like me to cover just email me CADNation@gmail.com. I am always looking for good topics and if I cannot get it into the blog I will still help you out if I can.
4 comments:
Thanks for helping spread the word. DWF started out as Drawing Web Format. It was published solely from AutoCAD, and John Lynch (R13 VP) wanted people to be able to associate it with AutoCAD drawings. (As Sun's Java [which is not an acronym] was all the rage, I wanted to call them WHIP! files.) Later when we expanded DWF's role to include designs from numerous applications, even those not created by Autodesk, we changed the name to Design Web Format to capture its true essence. Great article - keep it up.
Thanks Scott! It is always nice to know some history from the insiders about the technology that we use. Like any geek I enjoy all the little tid-bits of information about history and development.
I love the DWF format and wish that I could get all of my clients away from PDF. It really is not a useful format for what we do on a day to day basis.
It is great to to get some feedback also! Keep checking back, I would love to hear from you again.
Ok so I love DWF, mostly becouse the file format is so much smaller, but I have alot of old school pdf'ers here and can't seem to convert them over to the dwf side of the force. Especially with the review and comment portion in pdf.
So aside from being able to import your dwf files into your dwg, saving evan more paper, what else is the really big benefit to using dwf verses pdf?
"Big benefit to using dwf verses pdf?"
Redline and comment directly in the DWF file is very convienient. Then you can access those markups using the markup manager in Autocad. Say goodbye to highlighters.
Measure and snap to all of your standard Osnaps. Dimension and querry features allow more gathering of actual data.
Layer information can also be kept in a DWf so that layers can be turned off and on as needed.
The Plot drivers and editing software are FREE. Unless I my memory is failing me, the Adobe tools all cost money per seat.
That is just off the top of my head.
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