Q: I am using PDFNet SDK and SilverDox (http://www.pdftron.com/silverdox) for viewing PDF, MS Office, and other formats in a browser. PDF and Office work great, whoever I am not sure how to deal with AutoCad DWG files.
Any ideas how to convert DWG?
A: There are multiple ways to add support for AutoDesk DWG in SilverDox. All options boil down to conversion from DWG to PDF or XPS.
Ideally DWG files can be published as DWFx (which is really an XPS file – for more info please see http://autodesk.blogs.com/between_the_lines/2008/02/dwfx-and-autoca.html, http://dwf.blogs.com/beyond_the_paper/2007/02/autocad_2008_dw.html).
Besides AutoCAD, ‘Autodesk Design Review’ and ‘TrueView’ are FREE apps that will allow you to convert from DWG to DWFx/PDF.
Another option for conversion from DWG to PDF/XPS is using PDFNet Virtual Printer Driver (as shown in the Convert sample - http://www.pdftron.com/pdfnet/samplecode.html#Convert). For this to work you would need to associate dwg extension with any app (e.g. a viewer) that can print a DWG file.
Finally there are wide range of affordable third party command-line tools that could be used to convert from DWF to PDF. Some of them are:
dwgpdfconverter.com/products_dwg2pdf_features.html
freefirestudio.com/dwg-to-pdf.htm
cad2cad.eu
- please note that PDFTron neither endorses nor recommends use of these products. No formal evaluation was performed.