Application Notes for Autodesk Building Systems

Wednesday, October 18, 2006 

Smart Tagging PDF's

Topic: Will not an ABS topic, nonetheless a useful one to document.

Monday, October 16, 2006 

Font Management Strategy

Administration Topic: Managing TrueType versus AutoCAD standard fonts.

Our master network font directory for both TrueType and SHX fonts is as follows, store all new and updated fonts to this location for general distribution:

n:\cad\acadnet\abs2006\autodesk\fonts

Our AutoCAD update script will then distribute ALL standard fonts, both TrueType and Autodesk shape file (.shx), to the following local directory, which is our configured workstation AutoCAD font path:

c:\abs2006\autodesk\fonts

Windows does not read TrueType fonts from this directory however, so it is necessary for the update script to also keep the Windows standard font directory refreshed with any TrueType font updates. For this the update script uses the NT Resource Kit utility 'robocopy.exe' with three switches:

:refreshfonts
robocopy.exe c:\abs2006\autodesk\fonts %WINDIR%\fonts *.ttf /xo /w:0
/r:0

/xo - excludes old files, i.e. doesn't overwrite newer files with older files
/w:0 /r:0 - wait 0 seconds
and retry 0 times for a file in use

Friday, October 06, 2006 

Editing the Enterprise CUI

Topic: Editing the enterprise customized user interface for distribution to other users.

Enumerate on the following points:
  • Assure that the developer profile is loaded
  • Start ABS in Developer Mode
  • Open the drawing or drawings containing new blocks
  • Work on the discipline specific partial CUI
  • Customize appropriate toolbars, create new if necessary
  • Write blocks to network library using the appropriate macro