Associate Design Review with .CAL files

[remko.de.koning]

Hi,

We are about to implement Autodesk Design Review 2012 in our organisation. The preparations to deploy this application throughout the organisation (including the prerequisites) are complete. Unfortunately we are running into a small problem.

Our technical drawings have the extension ".CAL". Design Review opens up these files without any problems from within the application. However, there is no file association with this program out of the box. IE, when one doubleclicks the program, we would like it to use Design Review by default.

What would be a good approach to do this? We have been looking for an easy method of associating a file with a program but have not had any luck so far.

Any suggestions are more than welcome,

Remko

[whtank]

Thank you for your question.

Please follow these steps to associate Design Review with .CAL files:

1. Right click any .CAL file, select 'Open with' and click 'Choose default program...'.

2. In the 'Open with' dialog, click 'Browse...' button.

3. Select file '%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Common Files\Autodesk Shared\DWF Common\ExpressViewer.exe" as the default program.

4. Check 'Always use the selected program to open this kind of file' and click OK.

Please let me know if you have any further question.

[remko.de.koning]

Hi Tank, Thanks for your Reply. This is much appriciated.

Although this manual method works it does not completely answer the question. We want to do this for our users via script, GPO, etc. We don't want our users having to do this themselves.

We want to deploy the app remotely, set the file association automatically and have this migration go as smooth as possible.

Unfortunately we have not been able yet to find a good way to do this. For example, scripting, GPO, etc.

Any thoughts are more than welcome.

Remko

[whtank]

Indeed the association is recorded in OS's registry. 

You can create a '.cal' key under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT and set its default value as 'dwffile'.

[remko.de.koning]

Yes, it worked..

This is what we have done.

• Installed Local Update Publisher: http://www.localupdatepublisher.com on our WSUS server
• Deployed Self Signed Certificate (created with LUP) throughout the organisation
• Deployed Autodesk Design Review with "LUP" with the following parameters : ADSK_DESKTOPSHORTCUT_1=0 ADR_DONOTSHOWAGAIN=1 ADR_NEXT_INITIAL_CHECK=1 PREFERENCELOCKED=1
• Created a User Policy Preference: User Configuration-->Preferences-->Control Panel Settings-->Folder options-->Open With
•  Extension = cal
• path to use: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Autodesk Shared\DWF Common\ExpressViewer.exe
• Action = replace
• Set as default = enabled

Design Review is deploying successfully to our clients now. CAL files are associated to Design Review with the GPO applied.

Thanks, your tips are very much appriciated!

Remko