We made several enhancements to the AutoCAD Batch Processing Features in Acrobat 9 Pro and Pro Extended. As an industry we work with volumes of drawings and we need the ability to share these with multiple individuals and companies participating on the project. While Acrobat does not give you the ability to batch process several documents to pdf at once, we do give you this capability for AutoCAD drawings. This is one of those features that can sometimes be overlooked because the functionality is provided by Adobe but not in Acrobat, but from the Adobe menu in AutoCAD. In this blog entry I am going to take you through the steps to be able to batch process several drawings at once, but more importantly highlight some of the new features specific to AutoCAD drawings that is only available through the batch processing option.
The first step is to simply locate the Adobe PDF menu that was installed in your AutoCAD toolbar automatically when you installed Acrobat as shown here.
This will open the Batch Processing screen to which you can now add a single drawing or multiple drawings. Now you may be asking yourself why you would load a single drawing versus several and the answer is because this feature gives you some advanced capabilities that are not provided in the PDF Maker conversion of a dwg to pdf. The following is a screen shot of the Batch Processing screen.
The first step I typically take is to load the drawings that I want to convert. This can be done by selecting the Add Folder or Add Files under the DWG List section as shown here.
Once you have added the files you want to convert the next step is to specify whether you want to include All Layers or No Layers in the resulting pdf as highlighted here.
You can also choose the conversion settings menu which will allow you to change additional settings such as whether to include or exclude the scale. Also if you notice in this screen it is writing the pdf output to the PDF/E specification which is now and ISO Standard as shown here.
Once you have chosen the appropriate conversion settings, the next settings which are new for Acrobat 9, is the ability to control the Page Size and the Plot Styles. This functionality is only provided in the Batch Processing screen in AutoCAD and not through the PDF Maker. This feature can be used for one drawing or several drawings, and is a great enhancement to Acrobat 9. You now have the option of taking the defaults from what was setup in AutoCAD or adjusting the output to your specification as shown here.
The next section in the Batch Processing screen, and new for Acrobat 9, is the ability to select the Output PDF Options. This is where you can control whether you want a pdf for each drawing or layout and whether you want to package the drawings together in a PDF Portfolio for distribution. It also gives you the option of where you want to output the pdf files to. This can be the same directory or one in which you choose.
Last but not least, new for Acrobat 9 is the ability to Exclude or Include the model space for all the drawings that are being processed. This prevents you from individually having to select each file and deselect the model space if you do not want to include. When processing several drawings this could be a huge time saver.
Batch Processing AutoCAD drawings is one of those features that may get overlooked but is very valuable to you when dealing with large amounts of drawings. The new settings in Acrobat 9 should help to increase the usability and improve the efficiency in which you create pdf documents.
Have Fun,
Jonathan
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