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11.Note that the 1st row of data has a “P” in the Pur/Made column. Return to your spreadsheet and change cell F2 (which now says P) to M and press Enter. Go back to your drawing and note that the P has changed to an M. Because the data are linked, any changes made to the spreadsheet are updated in your drawing.

12.Save your drawing. Close your spreadsheet program without saving the change you made.

Summary

In this chapter, you read about the following:

Importing and exporting other file formats, including both vector and bitmap (raster) formats

Working with DXF files

Managing images and controlling their display

Pasting, linking, and embedding objects into your drawing

The next chapter discusses how to integrate AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT with the Internet.

Getting on the Internet

AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT offer many ways to integrate your drawings with the Internet. You can open drawings from a Web

site, hyperlink objects to anywhere on the Web, and publish drawings on a Web site. When you access a Web site (perhaps your company’s intranet), you can find blocks or other data and drag them into your drawing. This chapter covers all the ways to connect your drawings with the Internet.

Sending Drawings

You can send your drawings to others on your team or to your clients instantly — by either faxing or e-mailing them, just as you fax and e-mail other documents. You can fax a drawing if the recipient doesn’t have AutoCAD or AutoCAD LT and wants to quickly see the drawing on paper. (Later in this chapter, I explain how someone can use Autodesk DWF Viewer to view AutoCAD or AutoCAD LT drawings.)

Use e-mail if the recipient has AutoCAD or AutoCAD LT and may need to edit the drawing. You can also send a drawing to an FTP site.

Another option is to create a PDF file from the drawing and e-mail the PDF file.

Faxing a drawing

If you have fax software installed that you use to fax files from your computer, you can fax a drawing by following these steps:

1.Open the drawing you want to fax.

2.Choose File Plot. From the Printer/Plotter section of the Plot dialog box, choose the printer driver included with your fax software. Use the Fit to Paper option so your drawing fits on the recipient’s 81⁄2-x-11-inch sheet of fax paper. Choose OK.

3.Your fax software opens a dialog box to let you specify the recipient, whether to send a cover page, and so on. Choose Send or Send Fax in the dialog box to send the fax.

28C H A P T E R

In This Chapter

Faxing and e-mailing drawings

Opening drawings from the Web

Creating object hyperlinks

Publishing drawings on the World Wide Web

Creating DWF files

Viewing DWF files

862 Part V Organizing and Managing Drawings

FTPing a drawing

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and is a method of uploading or downloading drawings from a computer via the Internet or an intranet. You can specify FTP locations by choosing Tools Add/Modify FTP Locations from the menu of any dialog box that lets you select drawings (such as Select File or Save Drawing As). You need to list the name of the FTP site, choose a log-on type (Anonymous or User), and specify your user name and password if you’re logging on as a User. You can then open drawings from, and save them to, FTP locations.

To FTP a drawing, choose File Save As. Choose FTP, which is the last item on the Places list on the left side of the dialog box. (You may have to scroll down to see it.) Here you see FTP sites that you’ve added to the list. Select the FTP site and click Save.

E-mailing a drawing

You can e-mail a drawing from your e-mail program and include the drawing file as an attachment. Your recipient opens the attachment, automatically launching AutoCAD or AutoCAD LT. You may want to use compression software, such as PKZIP or WinZip to compress the drawing to reduce sending and receiving time.

Using eTransmit

The eTransmit feature packs together all associated files with your drawing so that you can e-mail it to colleagues, clients, customers, and so on. To start a transmission, choose File eTransmit. The Create Transmittal dialog box opens, shown in Figure 28-1 with the Files Tree tab on top.

Figure 28-1: The Create Transmittal dialog box enables you to create a transmittal file that you can attach to an e-mail message. The transmittal file contains a drawing along with all its associated files.

In the Notes section, write a note to the recipient. The content of the Notes section becomes part of the transmittal report, a separate file included in the EXE or ZIP file. If you send an e-mail message, the note becomes the body of the message.

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New	You can now save transmittal setups and then use these setups to quickly specify the set-
Feature	tings you want whenever you use eTransmit.

Specifying transmittal settings

Click Transmittal Settings to open the Transmittal Setups dialog box, which lists saved setups. You can choose any saved setup. To create a new setup, click New, name the setup, and click Continue. To modify an existing setup, select the setup and click Modify. In both cases, you end up in the Modify Transmittal Setup dialog box, shown in Figure 28-2.

Figure 28-2: Use the Modify Transmittal Settings dialog box to specify how to structure your transmittal.

From the Transmittal Package Type drop-down list, choose one of the following types of transmittals:

Folder (set of files): Creates a folder that includes all the files in the transmittal. The files are not compressed.

Self-extracting executable (*.exe): Creates a compressed EXE file. Recipients can double-click the file to decompress and extract the files.

Note Some people won’t open EXE files for fear of computer viruses, so you might need to notify your recipient in advance that you’re sending the EXE file. Also, some e-mail programs block EXE attachments.

Zip (*.zip): Creates a compressed ZIP file. Recipients need WinZip, PKZIP, or a similar decompression application.

864 Part V Organizing and Managing Drawings

	From the File Format drop-down list, you can choose to save files in earlier release formats
	if you want. From the Transmittal File Folder drop-down list, choose a location to save the
	transmittal files or click Browse to specify another location. You can leave this item blank
	to save the files in the same folder as the first drawing on the list in the Create Transmittal
	dialog box. If you’re transmitting a sheet set (AutoCAD only), the transmittal file goes in the
	same file as the drawing set data (DST) file.
	If you create an EXE or ZIP file, you can use the Transmittal File Name drop-down list to choose
	how you want to name the file. You can choose to be prompted for a filename, have eTransmit
	assign a name and overwrite any existing file with that name, or have eTransmit assign a name
	and increment the filename (add a number) to avoid overwriting any existing file.
Tip	Because you often don’t need the transmittal file after you’ve sent it (you already have all the
	files), you can put it in the Windows\Temp file or another location where you place files that
	you’ll delete.

At the bottom of the dialog box are several Transmittal Options:

Choose one of the following folder structure options:

•Use Organized Folder Structure to create a hierarchical folder structure based on the structure of the files in the transmittal package. You can specify the root folder for this structure. When the recipient opens the transmittal package, all these folders are created.

•Place All Files in One Folder puts all the files in one folder that the recipient specifies.

•Keep Files and Folders As Is retains the exact paths of the existing files and folders.

Include Fonts includes the AutoCAD fonts in the transmittal. If your drawing only uses fonts included in a normal installation of AutoCAD or AutoCAD LT, you can probably assume that your recipients have them. TrueType fonts aren’t included because they’re proprietary.

Send E-mail with Transmittal opens your e-mail program and creates a new message with the files as attachments and the notes as the body of the message. Using this feature makes sending your drawings extremely easy.

Set Default Plotter to None removes the plotter information from the drawings, since they’re probably not useful to your recipient.

Bind External References binds xrefs to their host drawings.

Prompt for Password opens a dialog box (after you save the transmittal file) where you can specify a password. Be sure to tell your recipient the password.

At the bottom of the dialog box, you can add a description for the transmittal. Then click OK. The Transmittal Setups dialog box reappears, where you can choose the transmittal setup you want. Then click Close.