Essential guide to 2D CAD publishing: what you need to know for successful sharing, archiving.(computer aided design)(Editorial)

Once designers invest time and energy into creating a drawing, it can be used for a variety of purposes beyond the original intent. Repurposing that drawing can at times be difficult, but help is at hand with a variety of applications designed just for this task. For this 2D publishing article, we elected to focus on file repurposing--how to get a drawing file into another form to share with non-CAD users, be it to present a design for client approval, to convey design information to salespeople or others within your organization or to illustrate a detailed aspect of a project.

Although PDF (portable document format) is the most widespread file format used for such communication, it's far from the only way to distribute design information. Other file formats, created by a number of different applications, are often more compact, more quickly produced and offer more extensive security features to protect privileged or valuable information.

File size. If your goal is to distribute information electronically, file size is a consideration--the more compact the file, the faster it transmits. Recipients of the file might not have DSL, cable Internet or a T1 line at their disposal, so decisions about the appropriate software may come down to final file size. The amount of time required to generate such documents should also be brief.

Security. Whenever design information leaves the company, security becomes a concern. Many applications provide some means of password protection or, in the case of drawings included in the document, the ability to turn off or hide layers that contain proprietary information. Typically there's a way to limit printing or viewing to further protect the design information. We've noted the available security features for each application in the feature table that accompanies this article online at www.cadalyst.com/0505cadpub.

Adobe Reader. The advent of the new Adobe Reader has made markup, redlining and commenting much easier for those who use the PDF file format. PDF files created in Adobe Acrobat 7 Professional can be flagged so that anyone with the Adobe Reader can mark them up and send their input to the originator of the file. For more on Adobe Acrobat 7 Professional, see Cadalyst's review in the March 2005 issue, p. 40, or online at ...