Stand alone app to clean dwg files (Looking for the holy grail)

[tstarkey]

My holy grail goal:

1. File comes in from outside consultant (via email, dropbox, etc... it may be individual files or in zip files)
2. User navigates to the project folder (consultant file intake), where there is a shortcut for this magic app
3. User drags the file(s) to the icon, opening the app, which prompts the user for the consultant name, and general description of the contents of the file (base drawings, maps, revision number, etc)
4. App opens the folder for the consultant name (or creates it), then creates a subfolder named by appending the contents description and date
5. It places the contents of the file(s) in a subfolder called "quarantined", and unzips them if needed
6. App thoroughly cleans, purges, audits, etc the files, and copies them into another subfolder called "clean"

I am hoping that integrating the app with the process of storing the file, and not having to open autocad will streamline and increase adoption.

Wishful thinking?

[Norman_Yuan]

The whole process you described could be divided to 2 tasks: organize the drawing files, and clean up drawing contents. The latter is specific to AutoCAD programming. It is totally doable, and the concrete business requirements/details would determine its technical efforts (not sure your intention of the post: do you mean to tackle it yourself, knowing it is doable; or do you want to hire someone to do it; or whish inspire others to create a generic app that can be available for business like yours?)

Functionality-wise, the app could be consisted of 2 part: an EXE that handles the files and triggers the drawing cleanup work; an AutoCAD plugin that does the drawing cleanup work. Depending on the work environment, the AutoCAD plugin, could run either in an regular AutoCAD session, in AutoCAD core console, or event in Autodesk's Platform API cloud services (using AutoCAD core console is probably the preferred option in most cases). With all 3 options, the AutoCAD plugin itself would be the same and the EXE could be developed with a bit of extra effort to easily configured to let the plugin to run in any of the options (AutoCAD, core console, or cloud).