AcroPlot Pro

CADalyst, May, 2004

ACROPLOT PRO

CADzation

www.cadzation.com

Price: $249

The two previous applications produce the PDF file format, but CADzation's AcroPlot Pro is adept at both PDF and DWF file creation. AcroPlot Pro is a stand-alone application, and AcroPlot Jr. operates from within AutoCAD to produce PDFs only.

AcroPlot Pro outputs in six ways to PDF and DWF formats. With either file format, it generates output as a single file that contains all associated files, one for each single file, or one for each layout or view. AcroPlot outputs to DWF 6.0.1+. You can select the PDF output version, including v1.3 (Acrobat v3.0 and v4.x) and v1.4 (Acrobat v5.x). The Windows system printer driver included with AcroPlot Pro also outputs to v1.5 (Acrobat v6+), although if your recipients don't have it installed they'll have to download Acrobat Reader v6, which requires more hard drive space and in general views PDFs more slowly than Acrobat Reader v5.

With AcroPlot you can add bookmarks and a title page and then e-mail the PDF file to a client or associate. Using a built-in wizard, AcroPlot extracts the title block attributes to use as the text for the intelligent bookmarks it creates.

You can perform batch conversion of an entire job of DWG, DXF, DOC, RTF, and TXT files all at once. You can also merge existing PDF files. Save project and job set information for quick retrieval when converting updated files. Conversion options include the ability to drag and drop AutoCAD paper space layouts into the correct set order, converting only the layouts that you want.

The program converts model space and paper space layouts, 3D views, and named views. It supports CTB and STB plot styles, along with embedded pen widths for accurate plotting to the final output file format.

During testing, AcroPlot Pro and AcroPlot Jr. produced very compact files in both PDF and DWF formats. AcroPlot Pro processed the test drawing into a DWF file in 1 minute, 12 seconds (283KB) and into a PDF file in 23 seconds (124KB). PDF files generated from both application easily import into Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, and Acrobat Professional, all of which were tested. The created DWF files loaded readily into the Autodesk DWF Viewer without any problems.