Document preview as thumbnail for pdf's rather than Adobe icon

[jlane]

We'd like to have a document preview of a pdf for its thumbnail rather than the Adobe or Bluebeam icon.  This is true for both the Vault Pro 2015 Client and web-based version of Vault 2015 (Thin Client).

Is there a setting (or a method of checking in) that would capture document preview for a pdf similar to .dwg, .ipt, & .iam files?

Thanks.

[Neil_Cross]

This would probably need confirmed by Autodesk, but I'm 99% sure the answer is no.  It's a good idea and a nice to have, but I think technically it's not possible.

As far as I know, thumbnails are generated by the CAD application and captured by Vault during the check-in.  PDFs tend to be dragged and dropped into Vault which is a process that wouldn't be capable of generation a thumbnail image.  

Would be a good one for the IdeaStation, but as Autodesk aren't in a hurry to fully support PDF creation in Vault I would doubt they'll dedicate dev time to this.

[cvdcage]

Hi Jlane,

We've been looking for this aswel. Autodesk does not provide a proper PDF iFilter with Vault so you have to install a 3rd party one. Adobe has one and I found iFilter v9 to work best with our Vault 2015 on Windows 2012.

I found this guide (.doc download) to explain it pretty easy and it full-content indexes all PDF files quite well.

Unfortunately Adobe PDF iFilter does not have an option to index the icon/thumbnail as it apparently does not work for server versions. Even followings guides like these dont seem to work.

Kind regards,

Christiaan

[jlane]

Thx for the whitepaper Christiaan.  This has put me in the right direction, I will investigate further.

[jlane]

Does anyone use the Vault Office license?  Maybe this provides the functionality we're looking for?

[Maxim-CADman77]

BTW, if Office document (ex. Word file) has the thumbnail embedded (user need just enable  "Save Thumbnail" option  on save dialog box) Vault (mine is 2014) does show it.