Failure to Batch Plot

[aaronrosenberg]

All, 

I am having issues getting batch plotting to work. I think I have narrowed it down to the autocad dwg launcher wanting to open dwg files with autocad electrical and not with dwg true view. This problem is going to be an issue since it looks like its still referencing the old autocad electrical 2009 references and all of our computers have been migrated to autocad 2012. But this is the problem I have observerd.

 I can not batch plot the files I get the below message. When I get the drawings and try and open them via double click in the windows explorer I get the acad.exe program can not be found. The .dwg file is associated with autocad dwg launcher.  If I goto the "Default Programs" in control panel and associate the .dwg file with TrueView 2012 and TrueView 2013 I can open a .dwg file through Windows Explorer.   Though this action is not enough to fix the launcher in Autodesk Vault. Does anyone have any suggestions?  Also, It would be nice but not neccesary if this is a solution I can test and then deploy via group policy. Thanks in advance for any replys.

Aaron

[carrie.ruan]

Hi Aaron,

Thank you posting this issue. Could you please try to open those dwg files and batch plot in AutoCAD?  The Batch Plot in Vault will launch the dwg's application to finish it.

Carrie

[aaronrosenberg]

I can open and batch plot. But we don't want to install autocad on every machine, we would like the production guys to just print to pdf drawings directly from the vault.

[jddrinkwater · Accepted solution]

We had a similar problem with inventor .idws - for us the solution was to enable and run the job server to create .DWFs.  The DWFs are opened and printed using Autodesk Design Review (Free).  Once you deploploy design review to the right computers they will be able to view/print without an issue.  Vault itself can't open the native CAD format, so it will still need Autocad installed to plot a .dwg.

Added bonus: plotting a dwf is quite a bit faster than the .dwg in our experience.

Good luck!

John

[carrie.ruan]

John's right, his solution is a good method. By the way, we can add watermark if Batch plot dwg files using visualization files.

Regards,

Carrie

[aaronrosenberg]

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=17558055&linkID=9261341

I am currently testing this hotfix. Works with pdf creator, but not adobe pdf standard 10.0 , but this could be a setting.