What viewer program to view and print CAD files only (including plot styles)

[Puggman]

Hi,

My client want me to send drawings to him over the web, so that he can print
them out directly in his office.

The easy answer is the buy LT, but he doesn't have any experience of LT and
I don't want to send drawings that he may be able to alter.

Is there an easy to use program that can print drawings with all the CAD
settings, including SCALE (very important), plot styles (line thickness etc)
and I can sent as read-only.

cheers for any help,
Puggman

[John]

Yes

Plot your drawings to Adobe Acrobat PDF which is a format that cannot easily
be changed and that plots accurately and easily with lineweights and is a
widely used & recognised file format. You do all the configuration and
control how the drawing looks when you create the PDF file. Your client
simply prints scale to fit on A4/A3 office printers or at scale 100% for
full size prints on a large format plotter. Only problem I find is you must
set draworder correctly in CAD prior to creating the PDF if this is
important to the look of your drawings.

You can create your PDF's 3 ways

(1) Most expensive but most feature packed - buy Adobe Acrobat 5.0 full
version and print to the PDF distiller to create your PDF plots.
www.adobe.com

(2) For about $40 you can print to HP/GL2 PLT file using any plotter driver
you like (I use HP1050C drivers) - then convert your HP/GL2 PLT files to
PDF's using ViewCompanion http://www.softwarecompanions.com/viewcomp.html

(3) Use free PDF printer driver from www.CtrlP.com to plot from AutoCAD
directly to PDF. Simply register the software which is free.

You could alternatively send your client PLT files who could then use
ViewCompanion to print them. Free for you but $40 for your client.

Hope this helps

John

"Puggman" <puggman2000@(NOSPAM)yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
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[Puggman]

Cheers John ;-)

You've given my some good options

I was looking at the Autodesk web site and they have a program called
VoloView.

Have you any experience of this program ?

It would save hassle at my end, as I just save files as DWF formats and / or
something called ePlot format (whatever that is ???)

Puggman

"John" <nos...@whatsever.com> wrote in message
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[Jim Patrick]

In comp.cad.autocad, John wrote:

>Plot your drawings to Adobe Acrobat PDF which is a format that cannot easily
>be changed and that plots accurately and easily with lineweights and is a
>widely used & recognised file format. You do all the configuration and
>control how the drawing looks when you create the PDF file. Your client
>simply prints scale to fit on A4/A3 office printers or at scale 100% for
>full size prints on a large format plotter. Only problem I find is you must
>set draworder correctly in CAD prior to creating the PDF if this is
>important to the look of your drawings.

Or use a (free) postscript printer from Adobe or any other printer
mfg., Then convert to PDF with (free) Ghostview
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/

The postscript gives better much lineweight resolution than the PDF
printers like Acrobat do, and the conversion in Ghostview to the same
PDF format doesn't seem to degrade it.

I haven't had a chance to test Acrobat 5, all my comparisons were done
on versions 3 and 4; but the line quality was very poor compared to
postscript. This is a known issue that I hope Adobe fixed.

[no one]

Unfortunately you cannot print to scale from the free version of VoloView.
DWF's = E Plots. Autodesk just like renaming :)

--
Regards,
Michael John Smyth
The Drafting Shop
www.thedraftingshop.com
in...@thedraftingshop.com

[CSG]

Last time I considered using PDF I discovered that I could
not output using PDF in formats larger than B Size (11"x17")

Last time I considered using PDF I discovered that it
knew nothing of the concept of scale -- or faithful reproduction
where scale is concerned.

Has anything changed?

--
<%= Clinton Gallagher, "Twice the Results. Half the Cost"
e-Business Consulting - Internet Software Development
http://www.metromilwaukee.com/clintongallagher/

"John" <nos...@whatsever.com> wrote in message
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[Jim Patrick]

In comp.cad.autocad, CSG wrote:

>Last time I considered using PDF I discovered that I could
>not output using PDF in formats larger than B Size (11"x17")
>
>Last time I considered using PDF I discovered that it
>knew nothing of the concept of scale -- or faithful reproduction
>where scale is concerned. Has anything changed?

Probably not, but the problem isn't PDF, it's Adobe's implementation.
I've settled on the PS-to-PDF route and avoid Adobe if possible.

1) I've plotted dozens of C, D, E, and larger size this way. It
requires some diddling with defined paper size and orientation (in
GhostView) prior to PDF conversion. Printed scale both before and
aster is correct, so size is not a PDF problem.

Now that I've got a plotter that uses PS directly, the scale problem
is moot: all the plots are PS prints. But it's more easily tested,
and HP's implementation of PS is absolutely accurate.

The PDF-Printer will not make lineweights correctly, while print to PS
will, and then Acrobat will correctly display the converted PS-to-PDF
lineweights. So in that case, it appears to be Adobe's printer that's
the problem.

[Dave Jones]

hmm, I just opened Acad (2002), plotted a D sized drawing using both PDF
Writer and then Distiller to test.pdf files. Then opened Acrobat 4.0, opened
the .pdf files and plotted them to the HP1050C. Works great, to scale,
linework perfect...what's the problem??
Dave
"Jim Patrick" <jpat...@shentel.net> wrote in message
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[Paul Turvill]

Adobe's Distiller will produce page sizes up to 129"x129", and we get plots
that scale as well as any you can get direct from AutoCAD.
___

"CSG" <csgal...@wi.rr.com> wrote in message
news:FXgH7.446146$ME2.52...@typhoon.kc.rr.com...
>
> Has anything changed?

[CSG]

Good news from all... thank you.

<%= Clinton Gallagher

"Jim Patrick" <jpat...@shentel.net> wrote in message
news:k9arut87q6lf5fber...@4ax.com...

[Jeroen Dekker]

A couple of years ago, we developed a utility called ps2bbox for a large
oil company. It calculates the bounding box (size) of each PostScript file
coming out of their CAD systems, so that the drawing can subsequently be
scaled for printing to different size PostScript printers/plotters.
Rotation is also an option. ps2bbox is not one of our off-the-shelf
products, but perhaps it can help some of you? On UNIX, we also have a
ps2hpgl filter to plot on HP plotters that don't support PostScript.

Regards,

Jeroen Dekker
--
PS2vector - The Graphics Connection to
* MIF for FrameMaker
* CGM for SGML and IETM systems
* WMF/EMF for MS Office
* SVG for XML and the Web
Visit http://www.square1.nl/index.htm
jer...@square1.nl