Hey, Brian,
This is an something you should clear up because it's a most useful way to
communicate. There's a number of ways, you have to decide the best for you.
If your contractor is at all savvy with computers, you can ask him to download
and install Volo View Express from
http://www3.autodesk.com/adsk/autoindex/0,,126153,00.html. Tell him it's free.
Then, save your drawing as a DWG, zip it up and attach it as a file to your
email. He can open it with Volo and even red line it. He can return it to you
all marked up with his nonsense or questions. Yipes!
Another way is to Copy/Paste it into a Word document (or other word processor
that supports Copy/Paste). It will automatically adjust to the paper size of the
word processor. The problem here is that the texts may be too small to view
comfortably. You might have to adjust your text size on the original drawing to
accomodate this.
In QC, there is (or should be) a command File>Send. This creates an email
message screen, with the file attached in the native QC format. I'm not sure
what that is for you (.CAD?), for AutoSketch it's an SKF file. You can send it
that way, but the recipient would have to have QC on his machine to view it. He
could then just click on the file, QC would boot and the file would load
automatically. I wouldn't hold out too much hope for that, though. The
contractor would actually have to spend money on the program.
[BTW, an email message should not be allowed to automatically open an attachment
(as long as you've told it not to - AND YOU SHOULD!!!!). It should arrive as an
attachment that the recipient is required to deal with, either Open or Save.]
You can also save the SCREEN as a jpeg image, and attach that to an email. Not
so nice because it's WYSIWYG and the texts won't be too readable unless they're
large to begin with.
You could also save it as a Word Metafile (.WMF). Word will open that file ok.
Don't know what your problem is there.
Stay tuned here for other folks to give you further methods.
You'll have to play around with these various techniques to see what suits your
various customers the best. Once you decide, stay with it. It's a useful issue
to work out.
Harvey
Brian wrote:
>
> I'd like to send my kitchen drawing ideas to the contractor via email.
> There is an icon on the File menu which looks to me like it is supposed to
> do this. Unfortunately I can't really figure out if it does, since the
> topic is either not listed or is in a corner of the User's Guide and Help
> files that I have not visited so far. I have gotten the error message, Send
> Mail failed to send message.
>
> Also, I've tried numerous techniques to save the file in various
> formats--bmp, jpg, gif, wmf-- and open them using other programs in order to
> use them as Stationery in Outlook Express. This technique works somewhat,
> but the email program does not print the image--so it is pretty useless as a
> means of communicating ideas to the contractor, who should be able to have
> the sheet in his hands. Of course, I could print it out and fax it, but
> that only insures that more paper will be consumed as well as introducing
> other inconveniences.
>
> Anyway I can't really put the inability of OE to print out these images at
> QuickCad's feet, but what about the Send Mail function which isn't working?