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dmohan3-Newcomer
3-Newcomer
September 30, 2013
Question

Conversion of AutoCAD drawing to PDF in Windchill

  • September 30, 2013
  • 4 replies
  • 10285 views

Is it possible to convert AutoCAD drawing files to PDF in Windchill without manual intervention?

The article https://www.ptc.com/appserver/cs/view/solution.jsp?n=CS32402 says that a 3rd party application has to be used for this.

Does anyone know anything on how the automatic conversion of AutoCAD drawing to PDF can be done?

4 replies

GregoryPERASSO
GregoryPERASSO16-Pearl
16-Pearl
September 30, 2013

Yes ,

As decribed in the PTC article, you need to deploy a CAD Worker.

Basically, it is dedicated conversion machine, that will convert automatically in PDF all the AutoCAD document that you will check in Windchill ...

You will probably need an Autocad licence. + the PTC worker component.

Then some light configuration on your Windchill Server to enable the communication between Windchill and the worker

regards

    D
    dmohan3-NewcomerAuthor
    3-Newcomer
    October 1, 2013

    Hi Gregory,

    The problem is there is no OOTB worker available for the conversion and requires some custom code to be deployed. Once the custom code is ready setting up the worker is not difficult.

    I dont know how to write this custom code or where to find it.

    Dinil

    Y
    ybagul1-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    September 30, 2013

    I have done it years ago on 9.1. Here is how

    1. Create custom AutoCAD worker

    2. Install "Acroplot" (licensed software) on CAD worker machine. Modify settings for PDFs. It creates PDFs via command line on AutoCAD.

    3. Deploy custom VB code for AutoCAD on CAD Worker machine. When AutoCAD file opens for creating thumbnail, this code executes and creates PDF using Acroplot commands.

    4. An IE task gets called by custom VB code to upload PDF to Windchill as WTDocument (not visualization file for business needs)

    Apparently, I cannot provide more details (worker settings, code) at the moment.

    D
    dmohan3-NewcomerAuthor
    3-Newcomer
    October 1, 2013

    Thanks Yogesh for the help. I think this would shed some light on how the conversion can be done.

    Wish I could get the custom VB code that you mentioned since I am not good at VB.

    C
    ChrisPLM12-Amethyst
    12-Amethyst
    September 30, 2015

    Hello

    the solution I adopted in my previous company was to implement PSW from Etrage. We had live dwg files stored in WTdocument which were converted into PDF outside of PDMLink or remove automatically depending of the life cycle state. We could also load PSW with a list of WTdocument number to mass create pdf. we once had a list of over 20 000 drawings )

    You can see from all the responses that you need a third party application or create a custom code and that it is possible

    Good luck

    Best regards

    T
    tchao10-Marble
    10-Marble
    March 1, 2016

    We did a customization of CAD publisher to publish the AutoCAD PDF using the AnyDWG's DWG to PDF converter.  I am able create AutoCAD to PDF this way, but it is hard to put the PDF into the Thumbnail.

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