batch edrawings

I need to convert a large number of ACAD drawings to edrawings, the
task schedular will only create edrawings from solidworks files, is
there anyway around this? I also need to create HTML files from these
edrawings, can this also be done as part of a batch job/script?

Thanks

 

In principle, you could do this with a macro, if you were happy to do the
conversion by running the macro from inside SolidWorks. Alternatively, you
could write pretty much the same code in VB6 and schedule it from a batch
job.

You could start by recording a macro of opening one AutoCAD file with the
options that you want and then saving as an E-drawing. For example, I get
the following:

-------------------------------------------
Dim swApp As Object
Dim Part As Object
Dim boolstatus As Boolean
Dim longstatus As Long, longwarnings As Long
Dim FeatureData As Object
Dim Feature As Object
Dim Component As Object
Sub main()

Set swApp = Application.SldWorks

swApp.LoadFile2 "D:\Program Files\SolidWorks
2004\samples\tutorial\AutoCAD\7550-021.dwg", "2 3"
Set Part = swApp.ActiveDoc
swApp.ActiveDoc.ActiveView.FrameWidth = 1205
swApp.ActiveDoc.ActiveView.FrameHeight = 850
Part.SaveAs2 "D:\temp\Draw1.EDRW", 0, True, False
End Sub
-------------------------------------------

LoadFile2 loads foreign files , including AutoCAD. SolidWorks determines
the file type by the extension, .dwg, .dxf etc. The next string "2 3" are
AutoCAD specific options that were used to load the file.
2 - Paper Size B
3 - LengthUnit Inches
See the API documentation for details.

SaveAs2 saves the document to file. Again the file type is determined by
the extension, so to save an E-Drawing make sure the save name has a .EDRW
extension.

You could package the above macro as a function, and call the function in a
loop to, for example, convert all the AutoCAD files in a directory.

Apart from the batch job issue, HTML on its own is not so great for
representing drawings. For something ubiquitous, you could use HTML
referencing JPEG or GIF files for the drawing data in bitmap format. If
you want a vector format, then you will probably have to put up with a web
browser plugin. Philippe Guglielmetti always recommends SVG - see his page
on vector formats for details:

http://www.dynabits.com/services/vector/index.htm

 

Paul,

Thanks for the info! That is what I was trying to do.

Vince