Do you have thousands of DWG files that you would like to publish to DWF? Much like the story of the cobbler and the elves who did his work while he slept, wouldn't you like to arrive at your office, after a sound night's rest, to find up to date DWF files waiting for you? Project Freewheel Software Developer, John Schmier, has come to the rescue.
BatchDWF is an ObjectARX (AutoCAD Runtime eXtension) application written in C# to be used with AutoCAD 2007. BatchDWF is intended to publish large sets of drawings with no user interaction utilizing the publish capabilities built into AutoCAD 2007.
The source for BatchDWF has been supplied for your use or modification. BatchDWF has been developed using Visual Studio 2005 and AutoCAD 2007.
BatchDWF give users lots of flexibility in creating there DWF from AutoCAD 2007:
- Fully scriptable
- Read from one directory or drive and publish to another directory or drive.
- Publish in recursive mode or only from a single directory.
- Supply a standard DOS file pattern to narrow the selection of DWG files.
- Optionally exclude Model Layouts.
- Optionally publish Models in 3D.
- Optionally apply Page Setups from other drawing files for both the Model and Layouts.
- Publish with or without layer information.
- Optionally include Plot stamps in your DWFs.
- Detailed logging, providing full list of files and sections that were published.
DISCLAIMER: While we could have waited to properly test and productize this utility, we are providing this early technology preview to you now in an unsupported form due to high user interest. This software is provided on an As-Is basis with no warrantee or guarantee as to its quality, functionality, usability, or safety. This software has had only limited testing. It is possible, though unlikely, that it may corrupt the DWG files it works with. Please ensure you have backed up your data before using this tool. This software is unsupported by Autodesk. Autodesk assumes no liability for your use of this software. Use at your own risk. Autodesk makes no guarantee that this functionality will ever become officially supported nor does Autodesk guarantee that this functionality will ever be integrated into another shipping product. Do not make any purchasing decisions based on the availability of this technology preview. We hope you enjoy the utility and would love to hear feedback: [email protected].
KNOWN LIMITATIONS: Please note that BatchDWF is provided as an unsupported sample application. Most issues listed below will be logged into the BatchDWF log file. The log file is located at the root directory where the published DWF files are stored. The known issues include:
- Some AutoCAD 2000 and prior DWG’s layouts will be un-initialized at file open. BatchDWF detects these files as un-initialized and will not publish the DWF. To fix this issue, the files need to be opened in AutoCAD 2007 and each layout needs to be selected, then re-saved.
- Layouts with Unicode characters are not supported. Publish will fail to output the file.
- Password protected DWG files are not supported
- Files with VBA routines, Object Enablers, and DWG files saved with other products than Autodesk will cause AutoCAD to prompt with an alert dialog box. This will pause the ObjectARX application. It is possible to set these dialog boxes to "do not show me this message again."
- Drawing files with .dst file associations that are no longer valid will invoke a dialog box in AutoCAD. This will pause the ObjectARX application. To fix, you will need to open the DWG file with these missing associations and either remove them, or re-associate them with the proper .dst file.
- The Page Setup Name prompt will not validate if the page setup exists in the dwg. If the page setup name is incorrect, publish will fail and the application will stop.
- The 3D Model detection code will miss some types of Models that are intended to be published in 3D. This code makes its best guess if the model is intended to be 3D, but will miss some instances.
- BatchDWF turns off background publishing. If the application ends unexpectedly, Background publishing will be left in the off state. To turn background publishing back on, enter at the AutoCAD command prompt:
setvar [enter]
BACKGROUNDPLOT [enter]
1 [enter]
Thanks John! Check it out!
Subscribe