By Michael Dakan

With every new version of Adobe^® Acrobat^® software, Adobe invariably seems to add worthwhile features, and Adobe Acrobat 8 is no exception. AutoCAD^® users will especially welcome the advanced features that have been added for working with DWG drawing files and converting them to Adobe PDF format for sharing and collaborating with others on the project team. This month I’ll go over some of these new features and show how they can make sharing and collaborating more efficient and less expensive.

• Time-Saving Batch Conversion to PDF Format
• Dramatically Improved Conversion Speed
• Round-Trip Redline Comments
• Conclusion — Useful Features, Well-Implemented

Time-Saving Batch Conversion to PDF Format

Before Acrobat 8 software, you could only convert one drawing at a time to PDF format, which could be very tedious and time-consuming if you had many individual DWG files in a drawing set to convert to PDF format. In Acrobat 8, you can batch-convert multiple files at once.

When you start AutoCAD after installing Acrobat 8, you’ll notice two Adobe buttons and menus have been added to the AutoCAD menu. The Acrobat PDF menu provides access to the Batch Conversion command from within AutoCAD.

After you install Acrobat 8, the Batch Convert command is added to AutoCAD.

When you choose the Batch Conversion command, you can select various options and Adobe PDF settings to specify how Acrobat converts the DWG drawings to PDF format. For instance, you can select whether to make a single PDF document of each sheet layout contained in the DWG files or a single PDF document for each drawing file; whether to bring in all layers or not; where to deposit the converted PDF files; and whether or not to bring in embedded scale information for the layouts.

Use the settings in the Batch Conversion dialog box to specify how the DWG files are converted to PDF.

When you specify files to batch-convert, you can select multiple individual files from anywhere on your hard drive or network using an Explorer-style interface. You can also select complete folders as well individual files. If you organize your files this way, selecting folders can be a significant shortcut.

If you've organized your drawings into sheet sets (as you should), you can also save time in the conversion by selecting an AutoCAD sheet set (.DST) file. Acrobat brings in all the drawings and referenced drawings needed for the sheet set, wherever the individual DWG files reside. If you have special sets of drawings for which you haven't created sheet sets ― which is common in preliminary design phases for client conferences, presentations to various groups, and so on ― you can also save a list within Acrobat 8 for reuse at a later time. Acrobat 8 also maintains AutoCAD layer sets from the DWG file for quick and easy layer manipulation in Acrobat software.

Note that by default all the layouts contained within the drawings are selected in the File Conversion list, alongside the model space views. However, the model space views remain unselected and will not be printed to the PDF files unless you explicitly select them to be contained within the converted files. In contrast, the layout views are all pre-selected and will be in the PDF files. This intelligent selection methodology is almost always what you want as the output in a set of drawing layouts because you seldom want to output a view of the bare model.

The list shows the files and folders to be converted to PDF format.

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Dramatically Improved Conversion Speed

One thing you are certain to notice with Adobe Acrobat 8 is how much faster you can convert DWG files to a PDF file. Drawings that used to take several minutes to convert with previous versions of Acrobat now take just seconds. For example, one file that takes a minute and a half to convert in Acrobat 7.x takes just a few seconds in Acrobat 8 software. This speed enhancement reduces lost time and greatly improves efficiency and productivity for the whole office when working with PDF files made from DWG files.

Round-Trip Redline Comments

While it’s not new in version 8, the round-trip functionality in Acrobat is worth pointing out as we look at conversion. If you send out PDF documents from AutoCAD for review, your recipients can use the markup tool in Acrobat or Adobe Reader^® to make comments and ask questions in the PDF documents. The Acrobat tools for redline markups and notes are complete and easy to use.

You can import comments back into your AutoCAD drawing.

Document review cycles with AutoCAD drawings (and with Microsoft Office documents) are easy to conduct entirely with Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader software because comments and questions can be imported back into the original authoring file when they are returned from reviewers. Thus you don't have to open up a separate set of redlined drawings next to your CAD workstation to work on the redlines. The redline comments, changes, and questions are available within the same files that you're working on, making document review cycles significantly more efficient.

Comments in Adobe Reader
 

The same comments imported back into AutoCAD

 

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Conclusion — Useful Features, Well-Implemented

As usual, I remain impressed with the changes and genuine improvements that Adobe always seems to accomplish with new versions of Acrobat. They don’t suffer from “featuritis” ― adding things to Acrobat that may “demo well” but don't really increase real-world utility or usability. AutoCAD users especially should find that Adobe Acrobat 8 is a very worthwhile product either as an upgrade to older Acrobat seats or as a new addition to a desktop suite of utilities.

I seldom look at the new features in new or upgraded software products without finding a thing or two that seems like a good idea but that I think could have been implemented better. Adobe Acrobat 8 is certainly an exception: not only do I see worthwhile improvements, but I can’t argue much with how these additions have been implemented. They not only provide useful functional improvements for working with DWG files, but they also offer the kinds of control settings that I believe AutoCAD users need to accomplish their work. Check it out!