Hi Everyone
Let me give you an overview first. I work for a large Utility company, which uses AutoCAD 2007 / Map 3D to product automatically about 4500 updated maps nightly reflecting the current status of our system. We currently are producing DWF’s but are experimenting Adobe 8 Professional with using PDF’s instead of DWF’s for our intranet site. I have been able to automate the process of creating the maps with a set of AutoLISP function(s) plotting using an Adobe.PC3 printer file as the printer in AutoCAD.
I seem to have two basic problems.
The first I would like to automatically “Enable for Commenting and Analysis in Adobe Reader” in our batch routine without user actions. Otherwise I want to use an AutoLISP or AcrobatAcadC.arx/dbx, PDFMAcad.arx call to automate this step.
The second is not as straight forward as the first; on large maps with a lot of data/text at times (not all the time) “Find” text does not seem to work correctly. In one case the blue zoom window will not show up at all when needed. You can increase the zoom to about 800% and the text may show up in the upper left corner, or at times you may have to pan the upper left hand corner more to the center to see the text being search for. Other times lets say you are searching for Q3175 a switching device it may highlight a totally different text string in this case it will highlight the string “Clear Lake”, which maybe somewhat close to the original search string or just out of range. Do you all have any suggestions for improvement? I am currently making sure that all text/attributes in blocks are using true-type fonts, Position Z = 0, Text alignment =0, Oblique angle =0, and Width factor = 1. Also how can I change the color of the zoom window from blue to some other color which would standout better against our map color selection?
Regards
Ed Taylor
First off, I'd suggest you take a look at Acrobat licensing. Your usage seems to be that of a server, and Acrobat's licensing does not permit usage on a server - it's a single user license.
That said, for the first part, you'll need Adobe LiveCycle Reader Extension server:
http://www.adobe.com/products/livecycle/readerextensions/
For the second problem, one thing you can try is to use Acrobat's PDF button inside Autocad. That should produce better results and would not limit you to TrueType fonts. Other than that it is hard to say. Would it possible for you to share some sample source/PDF files?
-abhigyan