Alright, what's the difference?
Dotsoft has released version one of a utility that will show the difference between two autocad files.
This was a recent topic on the augi forums, and while different methods for determining discrepancies were suggested, all agreed they would appreciate an application allowing this done automatically... looks like Terry has stepped up to the plate to provide it
"This low cost tool runs inside of AutoCAD 2000i or higher andallows users to compare two drawings. The differences betweenthe drawings are displayed in an empty drawing and a detailedreport is generated to document the differences.Details at http://www.dotsoft.com/dwgcompare.htm "
A recent update has been made to the mind-boggling useful utitilty that displays different icons in file open/windows explorer, depending on the autocad version of the .dwg: DWGicon.
" http://www.cushat.co.uk/di/
DWGicon.dll is a Windows shell extension that enables you to identify the version of a drawing just by looking at its icon in explorer. Have a look at the screenshot [on the website] to see what it looks like in a FileOpen dialog ([shown there from within] AutoCAD, but you don't need to have CAD software installed on your machine for it to work.) "
Melanie,
ReplyDeleteSince you posted on my website it seems only fair that I should return the compliment.
Regarding the DWGIcon shell for Windows Explorer... ARRGH! Not another one!
When Autodesk made their products capable of being digitally signed, the brains there must have thought, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if Explorer showed signed drawings with a different icon than unsigned drawings? Let's include a shell extension for this and install it when we install any Autodesk product. And LET'S NOT TELL THE USER!"
This little extension causes Explorer to examine every .DWG in a folder to decide what icon to use to display it before it ever starts to populate the browser pane with files. This slows down browsing on our LAN (and even more so across our WAN) enormously! It's ridiculous. And even more ridiculous were the months it took me to ferret out this infomation and disable alternate icons company wide. I still hear the screams of my users. Sometimes late at night while I'm dreaming. Gawd! It's awful.
There, I feel better now. Thank you.
Ward,
ReplyDeleteThanks for chiming in... I knew I'd heard of this thing, but, wasn't sure how it worked. As I was googling to try to find it for someone, I did come across many postings and complaints about the digital signatures checking, which slows things down. So, understanding now that those two things would work in sort of the same way, it makes sense that the dwgicon shell would slow things down too.
Thanks for your $0.02 on the topic, and this is a good thing for people to keep in mind when searching for the elusive cause of a slow-down.