Back in April, I posted an article about State of the Practice for DWF with Commercial Reprographers. Yesterday, Senior Architect and DWF Technical Evangelist, Brian Mathews covered Managing Complex AEC Designs with Autodesk DWF at an International Reprographics Association (IRgA) webinar (web-based seminar). After the presentation, several reprographers were curious as to how to configure their Océ Repro Desk Servers to natively support DWF files.
To start the process, a reprographers needs to download the free Océ Client Tools from the Océ Plan Center web site: http://www.oceplancenter.com/download.asp. The reprographer installs the Océ Client Tools on the same computer that is running Océ Repro Desk Server. The Océ Client Tools include a makeldf.exe utility that is essential to this process. The makeldf.exe utility is then configured into Océ Repro Desk Server as a file preprocessor:
In Windows Explorer, create a directory where the MakeLDF utility will write files to (for example, create c:\ocerd\MakeLDF).
In Océ Repro Desk Server 1.6.3, click Configure->Advanced.
Expand the File Processing branch.
Expand the DWF branch.
Click the "Preprocess Target Directory" branch and enter the full path of the directory that you created in step 1, e.g. c:\ocerd\MakeLDF.
Click the Preprocess Command branch. Enter the following command line exactly as it is written here:
makeldf "%f" /D=%d
Make sure you have quotes around the file name since the paths to the DWF files you process may contain spaces.Click OK in the Configuration Manager dialog.
Brian's presentation demonstrated industry trends toward keeping data digital as long as possible. As such reprographers will have more opportunities to work with more DWF files as more and more people become involved in Architectural, Electrical, and Construction projects.
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