Frosty Day

Just a photo that I took on my birthday!

Free Renaming – A Second Look

Sometimes people leave things thinking that they know the limitations of it. Thinking, that because they knew it or used it, or was a part of it for so long, that they knew all about it. The fact is that people make mistakes. Sometimes, if we look again, deeper into things we once knew, we can come away with more than what we expected or hoped. This can be true in many things, including relationships, friendships, or in this case, my old renaming utility Lupas Rename!
I think it’s important to right whatever wrongs we may have caused, so today, I am writing a few corrections for users who may have put Lupas Rename “out to pasture”, so to speak.
Let’s call this a re-review! While looking a bit more in depth at LR2000’s features, I came across a couple things that proved worth sharing.

1. LR2005 supports renaming files based on a list! Though the option was there, I somehow missed it!

To access the list feature, select the text editor button.

With the editor open, you can import text (file-->open) or use some of the other features to tweak your file list from the Import menu.

I’m just going to type my list as an example. And click the “X” button to close the window and return to the main screen.

Now in the main screen, we have to specify that we want to use the text in the text editor. We select The “replace text” option and RIGHT-CLICK to access a menu of available variables.

This context menu has lots of options, so, explore it! Really, i would like to see access to these options, a little bit more obvious. like a drop down list in the text box field or something. Because, if you don’t use a utility like this all the time, you’ll forget about this functionality.
You can see in this window, my modified list… with the <T> variable showing at the bottom.

With the variables available, you can get really creative options going. Also, using the “flatten folders” option, allows you to work on files stored in multiple folders! (it’s the folder tree symbol left of the text editor button.)
For example, i renamed 1300 PDFs that were separated into 40 different folders with different names in each folder. Each PDF was renamed to match the folder’s name and had a sequential number after the name. Total time to do the operation, just over 1 minute!
So, go check it out, LUPAS RENAME 2000.

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.

CADGFX 2010

Well, i've been working on releasing the CADGFX addon for AutoCAD. I will be releasing two versions. 2008 version will be for AutoCAD 2008, and CADGFX 2010 will be geared for 2010 users. So far, the beta for 2008 is about 70% complete. Updating it for 2010 will take a bit more work. I'm hoping to release the beta for 2008 by the end of the month. (fingers crossed) But here's a screenshot of the menu for 2008.

Freeware Renaming Utilities

Everyone at some point has to rename files. But if you have to rename multiple files, a renaming utility can be your best friend. I recommend two utilities.

Option 1

LUPAS RENAME 2000 Lupas Rename was one of those utilities I’ve been using for a long time. It’s small and quick and should serve the needs of most of your renaming chores.
The Good	Free Windows context menu support can be portable easy to learn interface can create bat files
The Bad	No longer being updated since 2005 Using tags for MP3 renaming is not intuitive Cannot rename files based on a list

Option 2

ReNamer by Den4b It takes a bit of time to learn the interface, but it’s probably one of the most versatile renaming utilities available. I wanted to find a small simple utility that could rename files based on a list. This is it!
The Good	Free Windows context menu support Can be portable Rename based on custom list! Save and Load “presets” renaming functions Powerful renaming functions using Pascal scripting Still being developed
The Bad	Terrible name (if you don’t know Den4b!) scripting is geared for programmers Interface for selection/filter mode is clunky

They’re both free, and relatively small installs. I use both of these tools on a regular basis. From renaming drawings and PDF files to renaming MP3s.

Context Menu Freeware…

The first one I use regularly is Firmtools Shellextension. It offers a thumbnail preview of many popular image formats. In addition to that, it gives the chance for quick image conversion and printing. It’s been useful for me.

FIRMTOOLS SHELLEXTENSION

If you want the same functionality for AutoCAD files, you download AutoCAD PVI Extension.
It’s just the thumbnail preview, no printing or any other functions, but I’m looking forward to an update to this.

AutoCAD PVI Extension

Third up for context menu, is a very quick and handy utility to upload images to image hosting sites: Tinypic, Imageshack, and Messyshare. With Tinypic Uploader, just right click on an image and select the service you want to upload the image to. You get a direct link you can copy to clipboard. This is excellent to share images for blogs, forums, etc. It also offers various types of screencapture with direct uploading features. Plus, you can batch upload images as well!

Tinypic Uploader

Freeware File Manager

My personal choice for a file manager is xplorer2 Lite by Zabkat software. I’ve never been satisfied with the windows default file manager. In the past, I was using Powerdesk, which was an excellent commercial app. Xplorer boasts, tabbed interface, dual pane file management, and a host of other features. The pro version (not free) has some great options for power users, but you can still do alot with the lite version. My only complaint about the software? There’s many features that are buried away under hotkey options and really should be presented in menus. It would also be nice to have icons for all the commands, so it would be easy to add them to the toolbar. Also, the toolbar icons are kinda small on hi-res monitors. I understand, the author is working on updating the interface, but this isn’t a tool that relies on appearance. It’s a powerhouse utility that gets better with each new release. Check it out!