Beyond the Paper

DWF display obeys ClearType setting

According to the Microsoft typography page, Microsoft ClearType improves font display resolution and provides a breakthrough in screen readability.

ClearType is activated on a Windows system by:

1. From your Windows Desktop, right click and select Properties:
   



2. Select the Appearance tab. Click on the Effects button.
   



3. For the "Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts" question, change the value from Standard to ClearType.
   



4. Click OK.

This has subtle effects on the resulting display. Looking at today's blog page, I see slight differences with Standard display versus ClearType display.

Lead Software Engineer, Eric Haines, notes that the Autodesk DWF Viewer and Autodesk Design Review will observe ClearType settings when displaying TrueType text found in a DWF file. This only applies to text that has been stored in the DWF file as text. It does not apply for text "saved as geometry" or text written in an SHX font. SHX text has always been written as geometry as far back as AutoCAD R13.

DWF users might want to try some experiments with ClearType on their machines. Our testing shows that results vary between LCD and CRT screens as to which one to use. In addition, the amount of zoom matters too. There’s often not one perfect choice for a monitor because of this zoom level factor. For example, some settings give characters that are less blurry, and thinner when zoomed out, which is generally more readable. Users can view a DWF on their monitors and try each setting, ClearType and Standard, zoom in and out, and choose which they prefer.

Your DWF wish is my command...

The Autodesk Inventor Wish List is available on the AUGI site. To date, many wish list features have been requested for future releases of Autodesk Inventor. Some of these requests involve DWF. For example:

1. IDW hyperlinks that publish to DWF are functional.

2. Be able to link files to DWFs, so when an Inventor file is saved, Inventor will update the DWF automatically. (This would be used without Autodesk Vault which provides this functionality.)

3. Have the ability to export an .ipn file and Inventor Studio file to DWF.

Legend has it that unleashing a genie from a bottle entitles a person to 3 wishes. With regard to wish number 2, such luck is not required. Sean Dotson has a utility that autosaves a DWF file when an Inventor file is saved. He offers it as shareware. Donations are accepted and appreciated. When I got my copy, I used PayPal to send $20. Your wish is already my command. So for a small price, your Inventor wish can be your Inventor command.

DWF at IRgA Conference

Reprographics is a term associated with the commercial print industry. Since the early 1900s, the reprographics industry has served a wide variety of customers with a wide variety of services and technology. This has typically included:

• Wide-Format Engineering Output
• Wide-Format Color Graphics
• Small-Format Digital Printing
• Laminating and Finishing
• Scanning and Archiving Capabilities
• Digital File Management
• Facilities Management (managing a printing device at a customer facility)

The International Reprographic Association (IRgA) was formed in Boston, MA in 1927 when a group of prominent men in the blueprint and allied industries met. At the first annual convention held in Chicago in 1928, the attendees discussed common problems and worked to establish standard practices and a business code of ethics to improve overall conditions in the industry. While the association and the industry have undergone significant change since the 1920s, the IRgA today still provides a framework for the exchange of information and support for the industry.

Today marks the start of the IRgA 2006 Annual Convention and Trade Show. The 3 day event is being held at the Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center in Kissimmee, Florida. Senior Architect and DWF Technical Evangelist, Brian Mathews, is speaking about DWF at the event. Among other things, Brian is covering the work that Autodesk is conducting with its partners in the reprographics industry. Although DWF goes beyond the paper, this is the perfect venue to ensure that DWF makes it to the paper accurately.

Much of the information for this post was obtained from the IRgA web site. [My apologies to René Magritte's "The Son of Man." :-)]

DWF Hyperlink Checker Visual Basic program

Software Quality Assurance Engineer, John Schmier, has been working with DWF since the early days of WHIP!. John was the first non-developer to ever generate a DWF file from AutoCAD. He used AutoCAD R13 and issued a DWFOut command. DWFOut only worked if a user had the WHIP ADI video driver in use. That was then. This is now.

As part of leading the effort to test various DWF products, John has developed a Visual Basic application that identifies the hyperlinks in a DWF file. To use this application: Download the URL Helper zip file (7KB). Extract URLHelper.exe from URLHelper.zip. Invoke URLHelper.exe. Click Open. Navigate to a DWF file. Select it. The number of objects with hyperlinks is shown. If hyperlinks exist, you can copy and paste one to the Navigate to URL window and click on the "Navigate to URL" button.

John is an expert at automation testing. He has been responsible for many DWF-related sample code items over the years. Thanks John!

Autodesk DWF Viewer: Turn off auto update

The auto update capability is a convenient mechanism for ensuring that Autodesk customers have the opportunity to download and install the latest Autodesk DWF Viewer; however, based on some companies' IT policies, some Autodesk customers would like to control the roll out of new Autodesk DWF Viewer capabilities. So for some customers, it is desirable to turn off the automatic update possibility. Software Quality Assurance Engineer, John Schmier, notes that this can be done by editing the registry entry:

hkey_local_machine\software\autodesk\dwf viewer\settings\autoupdate

The CheckInterval item defaults to 90 days but can be set to 0. The NextCheckDate item defaults to 90 days from the last time the user checked for an update. It can be set to a date far in the future.

These registry settings do need to be applied on a per machine basis. It is best accomplished for an entire organization through installation script processing via SMS or a similar tool.

How does Autodesk Design Review Speed Time to Market for Manufacturing?

As a follow up to How Does Autodesk Design Review Streamline Building Projects?, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Jennifer Toton, Senior DWF Product Manager, Diane Li, and Senior Buzzsaw Product Manager, Joan Allen have worked together to document How Does Autodesk Design Review Speed Time to Market? This paper features the manufacturing industry. Autodesk Design Review is the new name for Autodesk DWF Composer.

Download DesignReview07_collab-mfg_F.pdf (254.8K)

Yes the file is available as a PDF. Make DWF love, not PDF war. PDF works well for text. Nothing in this document needs to be counted or measured. :-)

Fun on a Friday

Lead Software Engineer, Eric Haines, found a fun web site for Friday:

http://www.madin.jp/ouen/index-e.html

The site takes an image like this:

and turns it into an image like this:

Fan-based placards are a wonderful site at stadiums across the world. 1024 cheerleaders can't be wrong!

The site does get very busy, and the error messages are in Japanese. You may have to hit BACK, Browse..., and Cheer me! a few times to upload and generate your own image.

Autodesk Design Review 2007 Measurement Capabilities

Happy Cinco de Mayo! The 5th of May is not Mexican Independence Day, but some say it should be. Mexico declared its independence from Spain on midnight, the 15th of September, 1810. It took 11 years before the first Spanish soldiers were told and forced to leave Mexico. Cinco de Mayo is celebrated because 4,000 Mexican soldiers defeated the French and traitor Mexican army of 8,000 at Puebla, Mexico, 100 miles east of Mexico City, on the morning of May 5, 1862. So when did Mexico become independent? I guess it's all in how you measure it.

Unlike the free Autodesk DWF Viewer, Autodesk Design Review (formerly known as Autodesk DWF Composer) provides capabilities for combining sheets from assorted DWF files, markup, and 2D and 3D measurement:

For 2D measurement, Autodesk Design Review provides a length tool, a polyline tool, and an area tool.

1. The length tool measures the distance between two points. Because DWF files retain the intelligence of the original design, measurements can be taken by snapping to appropriate shapes.
2. The polyline tool measures the cumulative length of multiple polyline segments, including rectangles.
3. The area tool measures the area of a polygon or rectangle.

For 3D, Autodesk Design Review can measure:

1. distances between points, edges, center points, or any combination of these,
2. angles between edges, and
3. radii of circles and arcs.

Autodesk Design Review does not measure arc lengths at this time. This is an item that has been added to our wish list. Autodesk Design Review can measure the radii of circles and arcs. Autodesk Design Review does not yet allow for perpendicular snap. Although Autodesk recognizes the usefulness of such a feature, the current version of Autodesk Design Review does not offer this functionality. This item is also on the wish list. Autodesk Design Review allows snapping for:

1. Line and polyline: The endpoint nearest the cursor.
2. Rectangle and square: The corner nearest the cursor.
3. Ellipse and circle: The center of the ellipse or circle.
4. Freehand: No snap point.
5. Intersections: At any point where two or more shapes intersect.

The ability to electronically measure in both 2D and 3D allows DWF to go beyond the paper. Viva la DWF!!

Use onload function to work with Internet Explorer security patch

In an earlier blog posting, I shared information from the Autodesk DWF Viewer help file on how to embed a DWF file in an HTML page. That post covered the parts of an HTML <object> tag and what those parts mean. This post covers an updated way to embed DWF files in an HTML page to avoid the "extra step" that people who view your DWF files now have to execute.

Microsoft is currently involved in a patent infringement lawsuit with the Eolas (Embedded objects linked across systems) spin off of the University of California. The case involves viewing dynamic content on the web and impacts how ActiveX Controls, such as the Autodesk DWF Viewer, get invoked. Perhaps in response to the litigation, Microsoft has released a "security patch" that requires the user to "press SPACEBAR or ENTER to activate and use this control." Jimmy Bergmark has a nice summary of the problem and a test page to determine if you have applied this patch. This extra step has negative implications for applications that use DWF files within Internet Explorer such as the Autodesk People Finder.

The Autodesk DWF Viewer actually consists of several ActiveX Controls:

The Autodesk DWF Viewer ActiveX Control is the top or "outermost control" and is invoked by the end user via an <object> tag in his HTML page. The secondary or "inner controls" are invoked by the Autodesk DWF Viewer control on behalf of the user. The EPlot control is activated for when reading 2D data from a DWF file. The EModel control is activated when reading 3D data from a DWF file. The EMap control is activated when reading dynamic data from the Autodesk MapGuide solution. There are several other smaller controls for various User Interface (UI) elements.

Depending on the DWF usage, its is possible for users to get a request to press SPACEBAR or ENTER for each control. What a pain. Microsoft refers to this request as a "gold bar." From the Microsoft web site: "When users encounter an ActiveX control for the first time, they will see a gold bar asking if they want to use the control. Users can then choose to allow or prevent running the control." The gold bar applies to Internet Explorer 7 as well as the patched version of Internet Explorer 6.

As we move forward, Autodesk has worked with Microsoft to eliminate the need for the user to encounter a gold bar when the EPlot, EModel, or EMap controls are loaded. Software developer, Walt Welton-Lair, notes that Autodesk DWF Viewer 7.0 loads the inner controls via external script files - one of Microsoft's recommended work arounds. This strategy has also been applied to the controls for the UI elements. So all that leaves for the end user is the invocation of the Autodesk DWF Viewer control itself.

To eliminate the gold bar when the Autodesk DWF Viewer control is loaded, Autodesk discussion group participant, Steve Segarra, provided sample HTML which uses JavaScript to load the DWF file via an <object> tag.

dwf_original.html:
<html>
<head>
  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
   charset=windows-1252">
  <title>Traditional Means of Embedding DWF Viewer</title>
</head>
<body>
  <object id="objViewer"
   codebase="http://www.autodesk.com/global/dwfviewer/
    installer/DwfViewerSetup.cab#version=7,0,0,928"
   width="200" height="200"
   classid="clsid:A662DA7E-CCB7-4743-B71A-D817F6D575DF">
   <param NAME="src" VALUE="my.dwf">
  </object>
</body>
</html>

dwf_workaround.html:
<html>
<head>
  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
   charset=windows-1252">
  <title>Means of Loading DWF Viewer with Workaround for
   MS April 11 Security Update</title>
  <script language="JavaScript" src="dwf_workaround.js">
  </script>
</head>
<body onload="load()">
  <div id="embedControlLocation">
  </div>
</body>
</html>

dwf_workaround.js:
function load() {
  var DivID = document.getElementById("embedControlLocation");
  var s = '<object id="objViewer" width="200" height="200">';
  s = s + '<param name="src" VALUE="my.dwf">';
  s = s + '</object>';
  DivID.innerHTML = s;
}

The codebase and classid portions of the <object> tag are actually specified in the onload function. They have been omitted here due to blog column width limitations. You can download a zip file with Steve's sample DWF file and complete HTML pages. Download DWFViewerActiveXApril11SecurityUpdateProblemExample.zip (28KB).

This approach applies to use of DWF viewers with Internet Explorer 6. Although this approach also applies to Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 7 is not supported by: the "as originally released" Autodesk DWF Viewer 6.5, Autodesk DWF Viewer 7.0, Autodesk DWF Composer R2, or Autodesk Design Review 2007. There is more work to do to support Internet Explorer 7. A hotfix is available for Autodesk DWF Viewer 7.0 and Autodesk Design Review 2007.

When HP Printer Drivers Attack...

Okay, maybe it's not as exciting as When Animals Attack, but there are simple means available to tame an HP printer driver that does not appear to be cooperating when printing DWF files.

Autodesk DWF discussion group member, Dan Kikkert, created a DWF file that contained an original sheet size of 36.0 X 24.0 inches. When he printed to his HP5000 and checked the box "Use DWF Paper Size," the Autodesk DWF Viewer previewed the paper size as only 34.0 X 22.0 inches - losing 2 inches in width and height. If Dan manually selected the paper size to be 36.0 X 24.0, the viewer showed the Print Paper size to be 0.0 X 0.0. This was in contrast to his experience with 11.0 X 17.0 inches. If Dan created a DWF that was 11.0 X 17.0 in size and then printed to his HP8150 by manually setting the paper size to 11.0 X 17.0, there were no problems.

Software Engineer and DWF Technical Evangelist, Ben Cochran, noted that the viewer gets the paper size information from the HP driver. With that in mind, Ben suggested that Dan try updating his HP driver. The other thing he suggested was to try configuring his HP driver to rotate the plot.

Armed with the knowledge that the paper size comes from the driver, Dan determined that the "Printer Defaults" did not have the Architectural paper size (36.0 X 24.0 inches) checked. So even when Dan would add the Architectural size while in the DWF viewer, the program always used the "Default Printer" settings. Adding the desired size to the set of defaults solved the problem.

Thanks for the question Dan. Thanks for the assistance Ben.