Creating PDF's In Wildfire 4.0 In Wildfire 2.

0 there were Adobe PDF and Adobe Color PDF printers types that allowed you to directly print to a PDF. PTC removed those printers in Wildfire 3.0. In their place they added SaveAS PDF and Email PDF icons on the toolbar. Issue #1 Many people report that they don't get plots that match what is on the screen. To minimize problems you need to make the following setting changes in the PDF Export Settings dialog box. On the General tab: pick Monochrome Select Use PenTable Note a default pen table must have already been set in your config.pro. If you want to use something different you need to load a config.pro the resets the default pen table. On the Content tab: Set Layers = Visable Only Set Fonts = Stroke All Fonts Issue #2 The PDF file gets created in your current working directory. With PDMLink that is your workspace, typically not where you would want to place them. The Alternative Solution Rather than using the new Icons, we have decided to revert back to an old method of creating PDF files. Thankfully Glenn Beer had a script that was almost perfect. We've tweaked it so it will work for all users and can be configured and maintained in a central location. Required Software Adobe Reader & Ghostscript which can be downloaded here: http://sourceforge.net/project/downloading.php?group_id=1897&use_mirror=internap&fi lename=gs854w32.exe&77875795 Or you can use Adobe Distiller instead of Ghostscript Installation The simplest method is to install both Ghostscript and Reader on each client computer. Plotter Configuration config.txt = contains some config settings and mapkeys make-pdf.bat = the batch file. It's commented pretty well. Release.pcf = the Printer Configuration File that works with the batch file pdf.pnt = Inch equivalents of ASME Y14.2M-1992 line weights, if you want to use them Bottom Line What we now have is a single mapkey, pdf, that creates a postscript plot file, the plot command is make-pdf.bat, which converts the .ps file to a .pdf file while adding today's

date to the file name. It then deletes the .ps file and finally opens the resulting pdf file in Adobe Reader. TPI's Issue #1: Because I wanted to create these files in the users HOME directory, the path to the files has spaces in it. For example, C:\Documents and Settings\haigh1\pro\plot_files Batch file solutions: To accommodate these spaces the batch file has to have double quotes around all the paths. Also instead of using %1 to grab the argument from the plot command, you have to use %* Issue #2: In Windows the Environment Variables for the users HOME directory are %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%. However, the ProE config and pcf files don't recognize this syntax. You have to use the UNIX syntax in these files. $HOMEDRIVE\$HOMEPATH Issue #3: If you decide to use distiller to convert the postscript file to a pdf the command line syntax looks something like this: acrodist /N /Q /o <full path>\filename.pdf <full_path>\filename.ps Issue #4: I didn't want a label on the plot. If you want it, edit the Release.pcf file, change plot_lable no to yes and uncomment the plot_translate line. Issue #5: I'm not using the pen table file to set line weights. Instead I have these options in my config file: pen1_line_weight 5 pen2_line_weight 3 pen3_line_weight 3 pen4_line_weight 5 That's equal to line weights of .025" and .015". The inch equivalent of the standard is ~.024" and ~.012". Pretty close. You could change pen 2 & 3 to line weight 2 and have .025 and .010". My reason for not using the pen table file is it overwrites any width defined in the drawing. For example if you look at the text on cross section arrows, it's more bold than the text of the section view name. However if you put def_view_text_thickness set to 0.06 in your detail setup file, they will be the same weight. The batch script without comments ECHO OFF set INNAME=%* set OUTNAME=%INNAME:.ps=%-%date:~10,4%-%date:~4,2%-%date:~7,2%.pdf call "ps2pdf" "%INNAME%" "%OUTNAME%" del "%INNAME%" start "" "AcroRd32.exe" "%OUTNAME%"