Free PDF Management

Despite the leaps and bounds DWF has made in the CAD community. I'm still seeing PDF as a popular choice for electronic file sharing. The reasons are simple. PDF has been around for ages. Non-technical people know about PDF. And many of us have to submit drawings to non-technical people for a variety of reasons. I still get questions like "What's a DWF file?" from people in the industry. So, let's face the fact that as a CAD user, you will still need to create and manage PDF files.

There are alot of PDF creation tools out there. Some of them are free. (See my earlier post for my choices for that!)

When it gets to free PDF management though, the choices dwindle considerably. But I found a great utility called PDFSAM (PDF Split And Merge). Well by the name it offers some nice options, including, Merging, splitting, rotating, reordering, etc. It requires Java to run, but I've been testing it out. It works great. Very stable, and you can use an installer version, or a zip version. That's a plus for people that have restricted rights on computers.

So for basic PDF management, it's my choice.

More than one way to make PDFs

AutoCAD 2008 finally has a PDF plotter, but for those still on older versions, what can you do? Here's my offering of PDF tools to use for AutoCAD.

1. CutePDF Writer installed with Ghostscript
This creates a PDF printer that can be used with any application, including AutoCAD. I use this, because it's free, free, free!

2. PrimoPDF installed with Ghostscript

Again, it's another front-end for Ghostscript, like CutePDF.

3. Acroplot Pro

An excellent PDF printer geared for AutoCAD printing. The printing is saved as vector information so the PDFs are small.

4. Adobe Acrobat

The most expensive option, even though they have different versions available, you'll want to spring for the Pro version if you're doing drawings. They also have a 3D version, that support 3D models from many cad applications. Very cool, and very expensive compared to our other PDF products.

Which one is better? If you want the cheapest solution and are uncomfortable with Ghostscript setup and installation, I suggest CutePDF, they have a easy version of a ghostscript install on the same page as CutePDF writer. If you want to manage, merge, split PDFs, create and control them with layer management and digital signatures, then Acrobat still reigns as the main choice.

There are free alternatives for PDF management, and I'll probably post some at a later date. But for now, this should be enough to get you going.