Here is another reason for you to have Autodesk Design Review installed on your desktop. In a previous post, you saw how to use Autodesk Design Review as your default viewer for raster files. What if somebody else – for example, somebody from top management or a subcontractor - who doesn’t have Autodesk Design Review or any other raster file viewers installed on their system wants to review the raster design files? Don’t worry about installing the viewers everywhere. We can easily convert these files to PDF or TIF files using Autodesk Design Review.
Open Autodesk Design Review application on your desktop. Make sure that the ‘List View’ and ‘Thumbnails’ palettes are switched on in the ‘Show/Hide Palettes’ ribbon menu.
Open windows explorer and select raster files you wish to convert (use Ctrl+A for in case want you select all the files in the folder).
Now drag and drop them inside the ‘List View’ window / Thumbnail window.
You can drag the files inside the list view to arrange them in the proper order.
Use the ‘Thumbnail’ tab, if you want to preview while arranging them in order.
Select all the files in the ‘List View’ or ‘Thumbnails’ palette and right click to choose ‘Print’ option in the popup menu.
In the print dialog box, select the PDF writer of your choice (I use CutePDF writer which is really nice and free). Your can also use common printers like ‘Microsoft Document Image Writer’ to get a multipage TIF document output. Don’t forget to select ‘Choose paper source by DWF page size’ in the ‘Page Handling' section, if you want to preserve original sheet sizes. The print range will be selected ‘All’ by default. Ignore the print range shown in the image as I selected ‘Current sheet only’ option by mistake while taking the snapshot :-).
That’s it. Now your uncommon raster file formats are ready to be shared with most of the people around you. Trust me; Autodesk Design Review is worth more than a free design review application. Go and grab it right now from Autodesk site for free of cost!
How do you publish drawings from different folders? Do you navigate to each folder from the publish dialog box for selecting files? That sounds really painful. Don’t worry; a simple drag and drop trick can ease your pain.
I will show you the method to accomplish this with the help of a sample folder structure. The following image shows a sample root folder with 5 different project folders.
Each folder contains different drawing files. For publishing all the drawings in a single stretch, follow the steps as given below.
Try that and you will come to know that it is as simple as any other AutoCAD drag & drop operations.
Recently our designers came across a requirement of publishing drawings into individual PDF files. For those who don’t know, here is the main setting you have to remember while publishing PDF files.
Rest of the publish settings shall be same as publishing multiple PDF files. This tip might be familiar to most of you. Well, I have another tip for you to handle post publish PDF file names using windows command prompt. Using REN command with a combination of wildcard characters, you can easily rename the PDF files to standard names. For example, you would like to rename ‘Drawing_xxx-Model.pdf’ file to ‘Drawing_xxx.pdf’ format where xxx stands for unique characters. Here is the command for the above scenario.
REN *_???-Model.pdf *_???.pdf
As you can see in the above image, the file names have been modified using a single command line. The wildcard combination may vary from case to case. Have a look at windows commands and command prompt if you have not yet experimented with it. It will definitely help you to handle your day-to-day tasks easily and comfortably.
It has been a long time since I made my last post here. I was seriously thinking of dropping the blogging activities, mainly due to lack of unique ideas. But when I received an email request from a AutoCAD LT user for a macro for aligning objects like Text entities, I couldn't resist trying it out and sharing it with you people. My sincere apologies to all readers for leaving such a long gap. That said, to be honest, I don’t have any idea when I am going to publish my next tip over here.
Back to our post topic. These macros can be used to align entities like Text, Mtext, Blocks and literally any object that comes with an insertion base point, both horizontally and vertically.That means you can use this macro to align a Text entity with an MText or Block Reference. The only limitation you will come across is that you will have to select the entities one by one as opposed to selecting all together in AutoLISP or VBA programs.
You have already seen the power of combining DIESEL with the CAL command (I call it DIECAL for ease of use). Once again, I am going to use the power of DIECAL to accomplish our task. Here goes the first macro, used for aligning entities vertically.
*^C^C$M=$(if,$(=,$(getvar,useri5),0),osmode;0;_id;\userr3;'cal;rxof(@);\)useri5;0;select;single;\lastpoint;'cal;ins;@;\userr4;'cal;ryof(@);\userr5;'cal;rzof(@);\useri5;1;_move;p;;'cal;@;'cal;xof([getvar(userr3),0,0])+yof([0,getvar(userr4),0])+zof([0,0,getvar(userr5)]);
For you to get an idea how it works, please find the image below consisting of different types of entities.
The next picture illustrates what the align vertical macro can do with these entities.
With a small modification in the macro, you can use it to align these entities horizontally as well. Here is the modified macro for horizontal alignment.
*^C^C$M=$(if,$(=,$(getvar,useri5),0),osmode;0;_id;\userr4;'cal;ryof(@);\)useri5;0;select;single;\lastpoint;'cal;ins;@;\userr3;'cal;rxof(@);\userr5;'cal;rzof(@);\useri5;1;_move;p;;'cal;@;'cal;xof([getvar(userr3),0,0])+yof([0,getvar(userr4),0])+zof([0,0,getvar(userr5)]);
And here is the illustration of the macro functionality.
Before running the macro.
After running the macro.
These macros have been tested in AutCAD LT 2011 and works fine over there. I hope it will work with previous versions also, at least in the recent versions of AutoCAD LT. If you come across any problems, please feel free to post it here.
Many thanks to Adam for inspiring me to develop this :-)
Sub ExtractDwfProps()
'### Extracts properties from model components of a 3D DWF file
'### By zoomharis@gmail.com
'### Date: 09/09/09
'### Based on Autodesk Design Review 2010 API
'### DWF specific references
' -----------------------
'### AdCommon 1.0 Type Library
'### ECompositeViewer 1.0 Type Library
'### ExpressViewerDll 1.0 Type Library
'### DWF specific controls
' ---------------------
'### CExpressViewerContol
On Error Resume Next
Dim oECV As ECompositeViewer.IAdECompositeViewer
Dim oSec As ECompositeViewer.IAdSection
Dim oEnt As AdCommon.IAdObject
Dim oProp As AdCommon.IAdProperty
Dim oCol As AdCommon.CAdCollection
Dim oCont As ECompositeViewer.IAdContent
Dim strDwfLoc As String
Dim strPropName As String
Dim strPropValue As String
'## Let me use a sample 3D dwf file
strDwfLoc = "C:\Dwf\3DModel.dwf"
strPropName = ""
strPropValue = ""
'## Open the dwf file in the viewer
CExpressViewerContol1.SourcePath = strDwfLoc
Set oECV = CExpressViewerContol1.ECompositeViewer
'## Iterate through the dwf model
For Each oSec In oECV.Sections
Set oCont = oSec.Content
Set oCol = oCont.Objects(0)
For Each oEnt In oCol
For Each oProp In oEnt.Properties
strPropName = oProp.Name
strPropValue = oProp.value
Next
'## Write code here to apply conditions to filter the list
'## and send the extracted info into a text or excel file.
'## Then clear the property name and property value strings
strPropName = ""
strPropValue = ""
Next
Next
Set oProp = Nothing
Set oEnt = Nothing
Set oCol = Nothing
Set oCont = Nothing
Set oSec = Nothing
Set oECV = Nothing
End Sub
To make it simple (sorry, if you find it otherwise ;-), let us go by a sample. I have a Piping & Instrumentation diagram in which I need to create a selection set of major and minor process lines along with the line numbers. The newbie designer has drawn some of the lines as LINE entity and rest of them as POLYLINE entity. All the major lines are placed inside 'MAJOR' layer and the minor ones in 'MINOR' layer. The line number is placed inside an attributed block reference named 'LINENO' which resides in 'LINE_NUM' layer. The image below illustrates the filter criteria for creating the above selection set.
If you represent the whole thing as a logical expression, it would look like the following statement;
((( Object= 'LINE' OR 'POLYLINE') AND (Layer = 'MAJOR' OR 'MINOR')) OR (Block_Name ='LINENO' AND Layer = 'LINE_NUM'))
If you have a closer look at the filter, you will find that the innermost criteria gets resolved first and passes its result to the outer ones in nested filters. In the above case, the criteria to be executed at the final stage is the outermost one (Step-5).
This way, you can save very complex filters in your drawing for quick access at any stage of drawing development or review.
That's it. Now you will find the list starting with the number or alphabet you typed over there. Shown below is a sample list created using the above steps.
In addition to that, a little research on the subject helped me to prefix the list numbers with a custom text, as shown in the image below.
2. Select the required P&ID drawings (Here I am using sample ones).
3. In the third page select only 'Text' as object type.(Tip: You can uncheck all entries simultaneously by using right click).
4. In the fourth page, select 'Drawing' and 'Text' in the category filter. Also select 'File Name' and 'Value' in the properties area.
5. In the refine data page, you will get a screen similar to the one shown below. This is the area where we are going to play our game. You will notice that the value field contains various text object values from different drawings. We need to confine the list to line numbers.
6. Now right click on the value column and select 'Filter Options' from the right click menu.
7. You will be provided with a filter dialog box as shown in the image below. For our purpose, select the 'Contains' list item from the first list box and type in a wildcard criteria *"-* in the second list box as shown in the picture.
8. Click 'Ok' to apply the filter. Now you can see the value column filtered to show only line numbers based upon the given criteria.
9. Click on 'Next' button and save the output as an excel file or table.
5. Select the extension from the list and click on 'Change' button shown in the details section.
6. From the next popup window, choose 'Select the program from a list' option.
7. Choose Autodesk DWF Application as the preferred application to open files with this extension. Also remember to check the 'Always use the selected program to open this kind of file' check box shown right under the list.
8. If everything is done properly, it will look as shown in the image below.
That's it. Repeat the same steps for other types of raster files. Once done, you don't have worry about it any more. Now you can goto explorer and double click those files to open it directly inside the Design Review application. I have configured mine to view file types like CAL, CALS, GP4, CG4, MIL, RST, PCT, PICT, TGA, RLS etc. (testing pending for some types). The best part of the story is that you can easily save this image as a DWF(x) file in order to send it to somebody for review purpose.
Autodesk Design Review is a wonderful review application with exciting features like '2D content comparison', 'PDF Support' etc. It's free and can be downloaded from the Autdesk Design Review site.
Point Sphere - 3D View
