Save View-Only drawing as PDF

Dec 08, 2005 8 Replies
L

I have written apps that batch saves PDF documents from SW drawings and to save time loads the drawings (which are assumed to be last saved since the model was changed) as view-only. I am starting a new one now, and it looks like something in SW has changed. The only save option for view-only drawings is PDF (and save as PDF via API call fails). I've tested on SW 2005 and 2006. The funny thing is, the last app I wrote for this ran on SW 2005, but I dont remember what service pack.



I have the SaveAsPDF addin loaded and when opening drawings normally I can save as PDF with no problem.



Does anyone have any more information on this? Or better yet, am I missing something and the functionality is still there (wishful thinking I'm afraid).



Thanks in advance.



Regards,


- Luther



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M

Hi,

are you using: Debug.Print Model.SaveAs4("D:\samples\d1.pdf", 0, 0, e, w) or something else (is there other ways?)

I'm using it on add-in but without "view only" and it works ok in

05sp3.1 and 06sp1.0.
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L

Yes, I'm using the SaveAs4 call. The call works fine, it's only that I am unable to save as PDF when drawing is opened view-only. SolidWorks support has told me that this is normal behavior, so I am unsure why this worked in the past, but aparrently it's not supposed to :)

Regards,

- Luther

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M

How about using "print to file" to create pdf, like SWup -

formatting link

I haven't tried but It should work with View-only...

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S

The only option I get when opening a "VIEW-ONLY" drawing is TIFF file.

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M

Yep, that's it then. It's possible to convert tiff to pdf but that's not a very good idea I think :-(

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T

Perhaps if you access your PDF-producing application (Bluebeam?) as a printer instead of through "Save As". I've done this previously creating PDF's on IE5 via PDF995 for a program that makes books of charts from a list of stock symbols.

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S

Is there a way to make Bluebeam print to a PDF file? it acts like it does when you try it, but it doesnt allow you to choose a location to save the file.

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M

I guess it depends what software you are using, for example I can do that with Thunderbird that I'm using to write this message because TB's print dialog has "print to file" option...it seems to work just fine, BUT, the result is of course .prn, not PDF.

You can use it for example GhostScript + FreeDist to convert .prn to .pdf.

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