New EplotView DWF & PDF viewer Palette

As many have probably noticed I've been MIA (Missing in Action) on keeping this BLOG up to date lately. One reason is the weather here in Norther California has been crazy. Last week we had temperatures around 110f then about 5 days later it was soo foggy out one morning it felt like it was raining. Hence, has been hard to sit down and write up some posts.

The other reason I've been under BLOG neglect is I've been trying to self teach myself the VB.net 2005 programming language. I'm not by any means a pro, but have been able to create a couple small programs that have helped me out in the office lately. So I thought i would share one of the programs I created here for everyone to test out.

The program basically is an Autodesk DWF & Adobe PDF viewer palette. This palette can be docked or anchored to the side of your screen (Anchored if you're using AutoCAD 2007). The palette allows you view, and print DWF/PDF files directly from a palette inside AutoCAD. This palette is especially helpful if you're station has one monitor and you dont want to tile applications to view files at the same time. You can then open up DWF/or PDF markups in the palette and make the corrections in you're DWG files as necessary.

Click here to download the program: Download EplotView.zip

Here is some screen captures of the program.

Viewing a DWF file inside the palette.


Print DWF's directly from the palette.

Open PDF's in the palette.

Print PDF's directly from the palette.

To load the program, simply download the attached zip folder and extract it to your computers hard drive. Next inside AutoCAD, issue the NETLOAD command and browse to the folder location you extracted the zip file. There, select the EplotView.dll to load it into the current AutoCAD session. Once its loaded into the current AutoCAD session the palette should automatically open. If not simply run the EplotView command on the AutoCAD command line to open the palette.

Prerequisites:
Autodesk DWF Viewer 7 must be installed
Adobe PDF Reader 7 must be installed
.Net 2.0 Framework must be installed

Known issues:

Palette looses focus at times if dynamic Inputs text box hovers over the palette. To fix, simply minimize the AutoCAD UI to refocus the cursor. If Dynamic Input is turned off there should be no problems.

The viewers will not show entirely maximized in the palette until you stretch the palettes width. Simply hover your cursor over the edge of the palette, once the arrows appear stretch palette outward to adjust the palettes width.

This program has been tested using AutoCAD 2007, and should work in AutoCAD 2006 as well. Feel free to test out the program in AutoCAD 2005 and see if it works. This program is not supported and should not be used on mission critical projects. If you have any requests or for find problems with the program feel free to send me an email, and I'll update the program when time permits.

Please let me know what you think.

Report any problems to [email protected]

If this program helps you out, feel free to make a donation below.

Comments

[Kal Houhou]

Wow wow wow, I am so impressed by the excellent work you did on this new kind palette...2007 works fine, 2006 no problem with DWF, but PDF was frozen couldnt resize the palette or move it arround (16 pages)...I will try more later. In summary it's a great tool to have in any office. I already found great great use for my 150 users! I will send you a paypal contribution soon...
Thanks to make it happen Mark.
Keep the great job up...
Kal (old Mark fan)

[Mark Douglas]

Thanks Kal for the nice comments. I'll look into PDF and ACAD 2006 issue you're seeing. If I find something that i can fix, I'll post an updated file.

See ya at AU Kal!!