Beyond the Paper

Lynn Allen's Blog: DWFATTACH Hip Tip

Technical Evangelist, Lynn Allen, has a DWF-related post today:

Happy Halloween (and a Scary Birthday)

Check it out!

ERROR: Layout not initialized - history and explanation

Based on his long history with the company, Vice President of Autodesk Labs, Brian Mathews, provided some insight on the "layout not initialized" message that can appear when publishing a DWF file from AutoCAD. Using AutoCAD 2007, ignoring this message and attempting to publish a DWF file that includes an uninitialized layout leads to the error message:

AutoCAD no longer requires that you associate a specific plotter with a layout. You can have NONE specified as the device. The "layout not initialized" error message is normally the result of one or more phantom layouts or other layouts that have not had settings applied. The solution is to either delete these layouts, deselect them from the publish list, or fully initialize them with real paper settings.

To understand uninitialized layouts, you need to know the history. In the old days there was just model space. People plotted from model space and had to set lots of settings to map model space onto a piece of paper. This was a pain. Later paper space was introduced which allowed people to arrange their paper with multiple viewports and title-blocks in paper coordinates. Paper space was a great idea, but often people needed to print a specific model in a variety of ways (different scales, viewport layouts, layer visibilities, colors, pen settings, etc.). The answer was to allow the definition of multiple paper spaces which were called Layouts.

Layouts were great, but many long time AutoCAD users were still unfamiliar with the productivity gains of paper space let alone understanding Layouts. The marketing team wanted customers to understand that they could now have multiple paper space layouts with the Layouts feature. To accomplish this, AutoCAD was updated to create two “phantom” layouts whenever a new drawing was created in model space (Layout1 and Layout2).

By automatically creating two layouts for every new drawing, users would see two extra tabs for “Layout 1” and “Layout 2” in their AutoCAD session and might click on them to learn about their productivity features. The fact that there were two of them was meant to communicate that the old limitation of a single paper space had been removed from the product and that users were encouraged to make as many layouts for their projects as needed.

Those two phantom layouts are the infamous “Uninitialized Layouts,” since they don’t really exist. They don’t exist because a Layout by its very nature needs to know what size paper it represents, what pens should be used, what printer driver should be used (if any), what viewports should be defined and at what scale. They are “uninitialized” until you click on them the first time and supply them with settings (clicking on them populates them with some default settings from your default template).

Now when the Publish command is used to create a DWF, it may encounter those phantom layouts. If you tell Publish to publish them, it cannot since they are not fully defined with a paper size and such. That’s why you get a publishing error. The solution is to either delete the layouts you don’t want, deselect them from the publish list, or fully initialize them with real paper settings.

It has been suggested that future AutoCADs should ignore uninitialized layouts automatically when using the DWF Publish command in order to simplify things. I love that idea.

Who knew that the Phantom of the AutoCAD was a layout? I had always thought it was Shaan Hurley:

Happy Halloween.

Discover Collaborative Project Management

Senior Field Marketing Manager, Dawn Wolfe, reports that new information regarding DWF, Buzzsaw, and Constructware are available:

Discover Collaborative Project Management

Check it out!

Updated Electrical Symbols to use as Markup

In April, Solutions Engineer - ACS Sales, Jason Pratt, shared a set of electrical symbols. He has updated the 1/8 scale ones so that they can be rotated. Download Symbols-8-new.dwf The file contains electrical symbol libraries in 1/8" scale that you can load into Autodesk Design Review. The symbol set includes typical electrical symbols like outlets, switches, ceiling fans, light fixtures, etc.

When you import the DWF file into Autodesk Design Review,

you request one symbol per sheet:

You then get 32 electrical symbols that you can use as custom stamps:

Thanks Jason. These symbols are really killer. (Yes this week is Halloween - not Friday the 13th.)

Survey Results: What are you using to view DWF files?

Senior Product Manager - DWF, Hilde Sevens, was interested in collecting some feedback on how our customers use DWF. She asked me to poll the Beyond the Blog Readers. The first thing that she was curious about was what DWF viewer you are using and which version.

Viewer	Percent of Respondents
Spicer Imagenation	0.0%
Autodesk DWF Composer R1	0.1%
Autodesk Design Review 2007	0.5%
Tailor Made Software CADViewer	0.6%
Informative Graphics Brava Viewer	0.9%
Autodesk DWF Composer R2	3.5%
Autodesk DWF Viewer 6.0	5.0%
Cimmetry Systems AutoVue	13.3%
Autodesk DWF Viewer 6.5	36.7%
Autodesk DWF Viewer 7.0	39.3%

Take note that this is a survey of Beyond the Paper blog readers - not a survey of our customer base at large. I also contacted some of the Autodesk DWF Toolkit programmers. What this tells us is that there are still a lot of DWF Viewer 6.5 users out there. It also suggests that there aren't a lot of Autodesk Design Review 2007 users who read the blog. :-( Thanks for the feedback.

Released IE7 Hotfix: Autodesk Design Review 2007 and Autodesk DWF Viewer 7.0

In a continuing effort to provide high quality products, Autodesk has released a Hotfix for Autodesk Design Review 2007 and Autodesk DWF Viewer 7.0 that addresses compatibility issues with Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.

Download:

• Download designreview2007_ie7_hotfix.zip (all languages)
• Download dwfviewer7_ie7_hotfix.zip (all languages)

Published Date:

• 26 October 2006

Applies to:

• Autodesk® Design Review 2007
• Autodesk® DWF Viewer 7

Corrects Known Issues:

• When the Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 beta is installed, the main menus in Design Review 2007 and DWF Viewer 2007 do not display.
  Solution: Apply the appropriate Hotfix to the DWF program(s).
• When trying to view Web pages containing an embedded DWF viewer control, "Access is denied" errors display.
  Solution: In Internet Explorer 7, choose Tools > Internet Options. On the Security tab, select the Local Intranet zone and set the security level to Medium-low.
• When using a JavaScript UI to interact with an embedded DWF viewer control, random "Permission denied" errors display.
  Solution: This issue seems to have been corrected via structural changes to code in the DWF ActiveX Controls. These structural changes have no direct impact on how the controls function.

Files Patched by These Hotfixes:

Folder: ...\Program Files\Common Files\Autodesk Shared\dwf common

• AdView.dll (new version is 7.1.0.928)

Folder: ...\Program Files\Autodesk\Autodesk Design Review\EComposite

• animationbar.htm
• animationbar_exe.htm
• controlpane.htm
• controlpane_exe.htm
• dimension_popup.htm
• fillColor_popup.htm
• fontSize_popup.htm
• gridpane.htm
• index_exe.htm
• lineColor_popup.htm
• lineWeight_popup.htm
• markup_popup.htm
• menu4.js
• menubar_exe.htm
• NavigatorCtrls.js
• navpane_exe.htm
• paneTools_popup.htm
• rotateImage_popup.htm
• sectionTools_popup.htm
• shape_popup.htm
• speedTools_popup.htm
• stampTool_popup.htm
• standardViewModes_popup.htm
• textColor_popup.htm
• toolbar.htm
• toolbar_exe.htm

Folder: ...\Program Files\Autodesk\Autodesk DWF Viewer\EComposite

• animationbar.htm
• animationbar_exe.htm
• controlpane.htm
• controlpane_exe.htm
• gridpane.htm
• index_exe.htm
• menu4.js
• menubar_exe.htm
• modelTools_popup.htm
• NavigatorCtrls.js
• navpane_exe.htm
• paneTools_popup.htm
• sectionTools_popup.htm
• speedTools_popup.htm
• standardViewModes_popup.htm
• toolbar.htm
• toolbar_exe.htm

Thanks to everyone who downloaded the beta of the Hotfix from this blog and provided success and failure ports. There are rare circumstances where the Hotfix for the Autodesk DWF Viewer 7.0 cannot detect the presence of the viewer. In these cases, uninstall and re-install. You can then successfully apply the Hotfix. (I installed the released hotfix over the top of my beta hotfixed applications rather than uninstall the beta hotfixes beforehand.)

[Autodesk has since released a Service Pack that includes this hotfix as well as other corrections.]

AUGI AutoCAD Wish List Voting

The AUGI wish list voting for AutoCAD is open. There are several categories that are related to DWF.

Now is the time to vote and make your AutoCAD voice heard.

Printing DWF from Wipeouts Depends on the Windows Printer Driver

I am old. Every time I hear the term wipeout, I can't help but think about the August 1963 song "Wipeout" by the Safaris.

Listen to Wipeout (only 17 seconds worth)

For AutoCAD users, a wipeout object is a polygonal area that masks underlying objects with the current background color. This area is bounded by the wipeout frame, which you can turn on for editing and turn off for plotting. It works a lot like WhiteOut typing correction fluid.

Sometimes users have trouble printing a DWF file that was generated from a drawing file where a wipeout has been applied. I wondered why. I decided to investigate.

1. The first thing I did was create a simple DWG that had two items: a polyline and a text string. My model space looked like:
   

2. The next thing I did was go to Layout1 and create a wipeout area. The wipeout area covered the text. Layout1 looked like:
   

3. I then used the PUBLISH command to publish a 2D DWF file. When viewed in Autodesk Design Review (or the DWF Viewer), the DWF file matched the layout exactly.
   

4. I used the unpack.exe program to extract the 2D data from the DWF file and convert it to ASCII. This allowed me to see what was in the DWF file using any text editor. Normally DWF files are compressed binary data. The DWF file looked like:

   
   (W2D V06.01)
   (Creator 'AutoCAD 2007 (17.0s (LMS Tech))')
   (Created 1161211702 '10/18/2006 3:48:22 PM' '{404337FD-A46E-41A9-86B0-F93CF5FE8160}')
   (Modified 1161211702 '10/18/2006 3:48:22 PM' '{404337FD-A46E-41A9-86B0-F93CF5FE8160}')
   (SourceFilename wipeout.dwg)
   (SourceCreated 1161211513 '10/18/2006 3:45:13 PM' '{269D4BC8-A10F-4E20-A186-73B9549B2791}')
   (SourceModified 1161211674 '10/18/2006 3:47:54 PM' '{3B4CF6D1-985E-4558-AEEB-40AC45483F7C}')
   (Units '' 
           ((1199.988448 7.3474553246e-014 0 0)
           (-7.3478100591e-014 1199.9305154 0 0)
           (-0 0 1 0)
           (2147471467 7.6109992287e-011 0 1)))
   (Title Layout1)
   (Embed 'image/vnd.dwg;' 'AutoCAD 2007 (17.0s (LMS Tech))' 'wipeout.dwg' '')
   (NamedView 2147471467,0 2147483647,9652 INITIAL)
   (View 2147471467,0 2147483647,9652)
   (PlotInfo show 0 in 10.99999976 8.4999997597 0.42495126799 0.22810038619 10.57504898 8.2718994862 
           ((0.00083333333333 0 0)
           (0 0.00083333333333 0)
           (0 0 1)))
   (PlotOptimized 1)
   C 0
   (LineWeight 12)
   (LineStyle 
   (LineJoin round) 
   (LineStartCap round) 
   (LineEndCap round))
   (Layer 1 0)
   (Viewport '' 
      (Contour 1 4 2147482806,960 2147482806,8638 2147472728,8638 2147472728,960) 
        (Units '' 
                ((139.7700182 8.5587109286e-015 0 0)
                (-8.5584452701e-015 139.77435673 0 0)
                (-0 0 1 0)
                (2147472409.4 1300.5278897 0 1))))
      L 2147472766,7787 2147482768,1811
   (FontExtension 'Arial' 'Arial')
   (Font (Charset ANSI) (Family swiss) (Height 39) (Rotation 65535))
      (Text 2147476305,4653 hello)
   (LineWeight 0)
   (Viewport '' 
      (Contour 1 4 2147483647,0 2147483647,9652 2147471467,9652 2147471467,0) 
        (Units '' 
                ((1199.988448 7.3474553246e-014 0 0)
                (-7.3478100591e-014 1199.9305154 0 0)
                (-0 0 1 0)
                (2147471467 7.6109992287e-011 0 1))))
      P 5 2147472727,959 2147482807,959 2147482807,8639 2147472727,8639
          2147472727,959
      (Group4PNGImage 'PNG' 0 736,506 2147474845,3270 2147479258,6302 (2480 
       89504E470D0A1A0A0000000D49484452000002E0000001FA080300000071
       A5095B00000300504C544500000080000000800080800000008080008000
       .
       .
       .
       4E9AC04913386902274DE0A4099CB4F9FA5ED02470D2FE8B727A056C7203
       50884B837431CC7B0000000049454E44AE426082))
   (LineWeight 12)
      P 6 2147474845,6302 2147479258,6302 2147479258,3283 2147474858,3283
          2147474871,3270 2147474845,6302
   (EndOfDWF)
   
   

   A white PNG image (highlighted in blue) was displayed - just like whiteout.

So what you say? Well the moral of the story is that when printing DWF files that were created from drawings that contain wipeouts, your results will depend on the printer driver being used. If the Windows driver has a buffering mechanism so that it can draw the geometry and then overwrite it before the ink hits the paper, then you should get correct results. If the driver does not have a buffering mechanism, e.g., a pen plotter, then there's no way to remove the ink from the paper once it has already been applied. The driver also has to be able to process image data in the background color.

In terms of sending DWF files to commercial reprographers for printing, solutions like Océ Repro Desk, PLP PlotWorks, KIP Powerprint, or CADzation AcroPlot Repro use DWF technology that handles DWF files published from DWG files with wipeouts properly.

Autodesk Inventor Hotfix - Instability When Exporting IDWs to DWF

In a continuing effort to provide high quality products, Autodesk has released Hotfix TS1061034 which addresses an Autodesk Inventor issue with exporting IDW files to DWF.

Problem

Autodesk has addressed a problem instability when attempting to publish IDW files as DWF when drawing views are located outside of the drawing view border.

Applies To

• Autodesk Inventor 11 DWF Extension
• Autodesk Inventor 11 Professional DWF Extension

Steps

1. Download Hotfix TS1061034.
2. Extract TS1061034.MSP from TS1061034.ZIP downloaded in step 1.
3. Double click on TS1061034.MSP to install this Hotfix on each system running Autodesk Inventor 11 DWF Extension.
4. Chose Next to begin the install.
5. Once finished you'll receive the "Autodesk Inventor 11 DWF Extension update" dialog box stating that the update has been successfully applied. Click Finish to complete the install and exit the dialog.

Between this and IE7, I am reminded of a song from my youth:

When you're hot, you're hot,
And when you're not, you're not.
He let my friends go free and throwed the book at me.
He said "Well, when you're hot, you're hot."
"When You're Hot, You're Hot," Jerry Reed

My wife claimed that I am the only one who would remember this song. Thanks to Randall Newton of TeamDWF who emailed me that he too remembered!

ARCHIBUS/FM v16.2 Released

Product Marketing Manager, Gabrielle Friedly, reports that ARCHIBUS announced the latest release of ARCHIBUS/FM Version 16.2. Version 16.2 provides tighter AutoCAD® integration, greater ease of use features, and is now available in English, French, Spanish, and German. One of the features of 16.2 is: AutoCAD DWF Viewer Support in ARCHIBUS/FM Web Central. ARCHIBUS/FM Web Central supports both Autodesk DWF Viewer 6.5 and Autodesk DWF Viewer 7.0, which resolves the issue with the Microsoft Security Update KB912945 on Windows XP SP2 or Windows 2003.