Producing PDF files

[panic mode]

I've found PDF printer drivers to be quite handy to share documentation since PDFs are so much smaller and better suited for email. Also the other party doesn't need any software other than free Acrobat Reader to print them out. I like CutePDF http://www.cutepdf.com/ better than some other programs I was trying before. Since most the time drawing set is collection of DWG files, printing them on CutePDF produces number of PDF files (each page separate). To merge them, there is another free utility called PDFTK http://www.accesspdf.com/pdftk/ it's just one EXE file that should be extracted somewhere PATH variable points to (like windows directory), then create text file with following content: PDFTK *.PDF CAT OUTPUT ALL_DWGs.PDF You can name it MERGE_PDF.BAT for example. Place this file in directory with all individual PDF pages and execute it (double click on it will do). In a second or maybe two new file called ALL_DWGs.PDF will appear in the same folder.

[PdL]

I'm using Acrobat 7.0 Pro, and have used PDF995 when no license at hand, but thanks for the tip Panic, will sure try some time. Ideal for PC's used for clients when a license is too expensive, and finally no banners or ads.

[Sleepy Wombat]

I bought the lic for the PDF995 suite, quite reasonable....and allows a few cool featrues like water marks and staionary etc....

[Hemant]

For a long time I have been using Xelo PDF - http://xelo.jp/eng/products/xelopdf/index.html

[Mark The Spark]

The openoffice suite 'writer' program has .PDF output as standard (like Word should!) Makes a much better job of graphics than Word too. http://www.openoffice.org

[panic mode]

interesting, an alternative to ms office...how do you find it? can it open files created by latest MS office? i'm guessing that creating pdf files is limited to applications which are part of office. is this true?

[Chris Elston]

Open Office has been around a long time. It was orginally used for Linux desktop users. It opens and saves to all MS Office files just find. I have a Linux desktop at home I use and edit a few MS Word files. I save them and can open them back up in Windows XP running MS Office 2003. I haven't updated my Office software in awhile...

[Mark The Spark]

Openoffice is an MS Office 'clone', seems to do everything the MS product does but with less fuss! Handles 'import & export' much better than MS and is better at graphics laden docs. I've not bothered loading MS Office suite on my latest laptop - dont think I'll miss it! but of course MS will move the goalposts soon......

[PdL]

Open Office is nice indeed, so I thought installing it on customer PC's so I could use the spreadsheet program to bulk edit Omron software I/O tables, like I do with Excel. But it didn't work, nothing is on the clipboard when I copied..... Perhaps it is fixed now, tried about 1/2 year ago. No I just have MS Office basic installed on customer PCs. Well, this is forgotten once in every while so I just might give OO another chance... the PDF output is a nice feature. For the rest the look & feel of Open Office is comparable to MS office. The major drawbacks of a few years ago are long gone and it is becoming a nice alternative.. But I can't help it, I always have a silent laugh on people who state that "M$ sucks!! Windows is the worst platform ever!" After that is said, they return to their desktops to surf the net with Firefox and do some work in Open Office... thank god they also run on Windows

[Hemant]

I have been using both MS Office (installed by default on my office pc ;) ) and open office for almost an year I started using openoffice after I got fed up with MS Word found writer application of openoffice very handy and specially formatting the documents and publishing them in pdf formats directly. Created my whole training report using open office But Excel version of open office is not yet good to compete with MS Excel, this is one good application of microsoft which rocks :) So presently I use MS Excel for creating Engineering calculations/simulation documents infact I am aslo developing a software called EDAxl (Electronic design assistant in Excel) and use Open office writer for creating reports and stuff

[stplanken]

Open Office came a long way and will probably do for most folks looking for a simple word processor or spreadsheet. However, Open Office is unable to convert fancy VB scripting. And unless I am overlooking something, it seems that with Word documents containing tables with calculations the math is simply ignored without warning. The PDF exporting is a nice feature.

[Hemant]

Openoffice uses javascript for creating macros. I guess vbscript is microsoft's stuff thats why openoffice team may not want to integrate it

[Nathan]

I've had a lot of success with pdfcreator. It's free and works well. -- Nathan Boeger, MCSE Inductive Automation "Design simplicity cures engineered complexity"

[Mr_Beginner]

I use AutoCAD 2006 for my 2D drawings and when I installed Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional, Adobe added two buttons to AutoCAD allowing me to plot/publish my CAD drawings in .pdf format.

[P Daniil]

Ghostscript and its viewer GSview work well, run on Windows and Linux and handle many paper sizes. To use them, a postscript printer must first be declared (you can choose any from the available listed for your machine). You then print to a file for this printer and then convert the postscript format to pdf with GSview. They are available from here

[NewToThePLCWorld]

Another option (also free) PDF Onlne