Looking For A DWGx/PDF Browsing Program That Fullfills A Specific Task.

I get Raw 2D .dwg files from a guy and I need to batch them together in groups of 20 - 75 for quick browsing. They will need to be browsed through (similar to a flipbook) and have the option of zooming in and out on individual files.

What I have figured out so far:

Using DWG TrueView, I can export batch the groups out as a single .DWGx file and I can open that with XPS Viewer and change the view to Tiled/Grid (Ctrl-H). This brings up a Grid View of all the files in the group (though I cant get it to work with more than 22 Pages) that you can mouseover and click to zoom in on individual files. This sort of fullfills the function, but not totally.

The Issues I Have With This:

-You have to hit Ctrl-H to zoom back out again. The people that will be doing the browsing have horrible user knowledge so the program needs to be as user friendly as possible. Moving the mouse left or right to browse, Left-click-to-focus, Mousewheel to zoom, Esc to go back to browse view would be exactly what I need in a perfect world.

-The batch export in Trueview wont do more than 22 Pages at a time. This is not enough. Anyone know how I can batch export more than that at one time into a single DWGx or PDF file

-Even with only 22 pages in the grid view, it gets hard to read on a normal sized monitor because of the Grid Layout. I like the mouseover functionality to browse around, but I need something more like a Book style that Browses from Left To Right (i see similar things on some flash based websites).

My Question is . . . Does anyone know of a program that can do this? It is a very specific goal, and it is very hard to describe without pictures but hopefully someone can help me.

PS: Thanks for such an awesome forum.

-Goatfarmer03

Do you have the full version of Acrobat? If so, you can PDF each of your pages and then combine them as a multi-page PDF document. I just skimmed through your question. Hope this helps.

Do you have the full version of Acrobat? If so, you can PDF each of your pages and then combine them as a multi-page PDF document. I just skimmed through your question. Hope this helps.

You can combine mulitple formats using this method as well. You can have drawings, Word documents with specs, photos, all sorts of stuff in your "flip book" if that would help you or the folks that will be looking at it.

I used to use this to make work instructions for a former employer. Easy to do once you get the hang of it, and if something needs updated, you can replace individual pages instead of having to update the whole thing.

--edit--and another thing that might appeal to you, your viewers can page through it using the page up/down keys, and zoom in and out just as they would in a word document.

You can combine mulitple formats using this method as well. You can have drawings' date=' Word documents with specs, photos, all sorts of stuff in your "flip book" if that would help you or the folks that will be looking at it.

 

I used to use this to make work instructions for a former employer. Easy to do once you get the hang of it, and if something needs updated, you can replace individual pages instead of having to update the whole thing.

 

--edit--and another thing that might appeal to you, your viewers can page through it using the page up/down keys, and zoom in and out just as they would in a word document.[/quote']

 

Hey Jack/Bbankston thanks for the ideas and assistance. Are you guys talking about the full version of Adobe Acrobat? I dont have it, but I may be able to source it from my employer. And you mentioned I could update individual pages instead of having to recompile/update the entire book . . . . how would this work? Would I have to have them all in .pdf or is the .dwg format workable?

 

Hope to hear from you soon

-Goatfarmer03

Goatfarmer03,

As Jack suggested, it's really very easy once you have your multi-page PDF document. Let's say you have a revision to page 4 - all you'd have to do is click on that page (in your thumbnails) right click it and follow the prompts. Again, you'd need the full version of Acrobat to achieve this.