Plug-in for viewing CAD thumbnails inside Dopus

I don't believe so. On the PC I'm logged in on right now I only have IE as a browser. I didn't have HTML thumbnails (in Opus or Windows Explorer) until I applied this tweak.

Come to think of it. I did install Yahoo Desktop Search on this PC once (to get the mutli-viewer .dlls). I subsequently uninstalled YDS. I wonder if there could be a connection there?

Yeah it works for me as well, very nice. Now if I can just find out how to get the Office (word, excel etc) thumbnails to work.

Cheers

I've never installed YDS so I don't think it's that either. Curious!

Now that I'm home I see that HTML thumbs aren't enabled here, either. Maybe Microsoft themselves disabled the feature in a Windows Update? Perhaps there are security implications with automatically rendering HTML files which they thought the better of? I'm totally guessing though. It's weird as it's a nice feature.

I found newsgroup postings via Google which suggested the feature was disabled by default in Windows XP, but enabled in earlier versions of Windows.

Typo,

The Brava free DWG viewer is surprisingly useful for something free. There are a couple of buttons which don't work in this unlicensed edition ("print," for example), but you can pan, zoom (by a specified %, or in/out or zoom by window), turn layers on and off, change background color, change image to monochrome, rotate 90 degrees, etc. It's fun!

I found an interesting discussion & solution (though I've not personally tried it yet) for showing thumbnails in Windows Explorer for Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator file types:

http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2005/12/13/adobe-cs2-and-the-case-of-the-disappearing-thumbnails/

I don't have Illustrator but even after upgrading from Photoshop 7 to Photoshop CS2 (I skipped CS) I still get PSD and PFD thumbnails in Explorer and Opus. Edit: Oh, it looks like I never uninstalled Photoshop 7 which probably explains things.

Opus has built-in support for viewing PSD files so that should never stop working but they do work in Explorer as well and PDF thumbnails are provided by the same thing (Acrobat Reader presumably) in Explorer and Opus.

There are a couple of caveats with PSD and PDF thumbnails in Opus and Explorer, though.

PSD files only get thumbnails if they're saved with an embedded preview image. (That is, neither program will reconstruct the image by combining layers; they rely on a flat image preview being in the file. You can control image preview saving in Photoshop from Preferences / File Handling: Image Previews.)

PDF files only get thumbnails if the PDF file has been saved with a flag which turns on thumbnails. The "Opus 82 Changes.pdf" file is an example of a PDF with the flag on, and the "Directory Opus 8 Manual.pdf" is an example with the flag off.

To allow thumbnails for office documents to be displayed you need to have the "save preview picture" option ticked within the document properties dialogue within Word/Excel. Only problem i've got now is that this setting doesn't seem to stick so atm I have to go and tick this option for every new document.

You could create your own button in those applications that runs some VBA code to turn that option on, just before saving the file. You just would not be able to assign it to the Ctrl + S key sequence or Ctrl + A key sequences.

[quote="kenalcock"]
You could create your own button in those applications that runs some VBA code to turn that option on, just before saving the file. You just would not be able to assign it to the Ctrl + S key sequence or Ctrl + A key sequences.[/quote]

I can create a new template with that option ticked and use that instead of normal.dot within word which works nice. I can't do that in Excel so your suggestion might be the next best thing, thanks.

inkslinger,

Would you be kind enough to provide instructions on how to install and set up the Brava DWG viewer to work with Opus9. I have downloaded the file and installed it on my system (XP Pro) but I can't find a way to enable it in Opus. I'm sure this is a grey matter problem on my part but you experience would save me from a major headache. Thanks!!!!!!!!!! :unamused:

[quote="inkslinger"]Typo,

The Brava free DWG viewer is surprisingly useful for something free. There are a couple of buttons which don't work in this unlicensed edition ("print," for example), but you can pan, zoom (by a specified %, or in/out or zoom by window), turn layers on and off, change background color, change image to monochrome, rotate 90 degrees, etc. It's fun!

I found an interesting discussion & solution (though I've not personally tried it yet) for showing thumbnails in Windows Explorer for Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator file types:

http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2005/12/13/adobe-cs2-and-the-case-of-the-disappearing-thumbnails/[/quote]

These threads may be useful:

See Greg's reply in this one:
resource.dopus.com/viewtopic.php ... hlight=dwg

See the viewer mentioned in this one (but note that it may not work with Opus):
resource.dopus.com/viewtopic.php ... hlight=dwg

I have installed Brava DWG viewer into the default directory (c:\Program Files...) and it works great as a stand alone program. I don't know how to set it up as a viewer plug-in for DOpus. Are there some files I need to move into the DOpus dirs or what. If I can get this to work so I can preview drawings without opening them it would be a tremendous asset to me. Any help is greatly appreciated!!!! :open_mouth:

[quote="nudel"]These threads may be useful:

See Greg's reply in this one:
resource.dopus.com/viewtopic.php ... hlight=dwg

See the viewer mentioned in this one (but note that it may not work with Opus):
resource.dopus.com/viewtopic.php ... hlight=dwg[/quote]

Has it been confirmed to work with Opus? Anyway, the first thing to do is to make sure it works in IE. If it isn't working in IE then it definitely won't work in Opus.

If you have trouble getting it to work in IE or aren't sure if it is an ActiveX control at all then you're best off asking the people who made it as I don't think many Opus users know about it.

I just installed the program "CADPreviewImage_old.exe" (CADPreviewImage.exe seems not to be available anymore).

Now I get DWG thumbnails (with some but not all dwg files) in Dopus & Windows Explorer, but DXF are displayed with thumbnails containing text.

Is there a way to make Dopus display more (all) DWG files, as well as DXF files, as thumbnails?

Thanks,
David.P

[quote="DRRachels"]inkslinger,

Would you be kind enough to provide instructions on how to install and set up the Brava DWG viewer to work with Opus9. I have downloaded the file and installed it on my system (XP Pro) but I can't find a way to enable it in Opus. I'm sure this is a grey matter problem on my part but you experience would save me from a major headache. Thanks!!!!!!!!!! :unamused:

[/quote]

Hi DRRachels,

Sorry not to have responded sooner, but I haven't been to the forum in many months, and also didn't have this thread set to send me notifications when it was updated.

Recently, someone else PM'd me, asking for any tips on how to get Brava Free DWG Viewer working inside DOpus 9.

At the time of my original post (June 2006), I had downloaded & installed Brava Viewer & was able to look at dwg and dxf files in DOpus 8's filmstrip mode without having to do anything too tricky. It worked fine.

However, for some reason, the company that makes the Free DWG Viewer has designed it so that it "expires" every four months, and you're forced to reinstall. This should be just a minor inconvenience, but after one of those updates, I wasn't able to preview dwg files anymore, just dxf files.

Since someone on the forum had just asked me about Brava Viewer and DOpus 9, I just upgraded to version 9 yesterday and installed the latest Brava Viewer. At that point, I couldn't get either dxf or dwg files to open.

I uninstalled, reinstalled, tried other ActiveX-based CAD viewers and had a very frustrating time over the last couple of days.

But the good news is I had a breakthrough & figured out how to make it work today! :slight_smile: There was something further that I discovered which had to be set correctly, something outside of the DOpus Preferences

I should also mention that this computer is running Windows XP Pro, and our CAD software is CG Survey 7, with uses a licensed AutoCAD 2004 engine, so essentially we have a stripped-down version of AutoCAD 2004 on our computers. And I'm now using Directory Opus 9.

So here's everything I can think of:

Download and install Brava Free DWG Viewer (which is a free ActiveX plugin).

http://www.bravaviewer.com/viewers.htm

In Directory Opus, go to Settings > Preferences > Plugins. The box next to "ActiveX Document" should be checked. (I don't know how much it matters, but you can re-order this list of plugins. For me, "ActiveX" is the first plugin on the list.)

Click on words "ActiveX Document" to select. Click on Configure. A popup shows the ActiveX document plugin viewer configuration screen. On the left is a list of file type extensions handled by ActiveX. Type ".dwg" in the small white box on the left bottom. Click "Add." Click "Ok." Repeat for ".dxf" and ".dwf". Close "Preferences."

Now, launch Brava Free DWG Viewer. (When I installed it, an icon for this program was placed on my computer desktop.)

Make sure that you can successfully view the dxf and dwg files by opening a file of your choice.

If it looks right, [here was the breakthrough] then in the Brava Free DWG Viewer, go to the "Options" menu. Click on it and choose "Set As Default Viewer."

There's a popup which is labelled "Associate File Types with Free DWG Viewer" that has two tabs. Click on the tab that says "Display with Brava Free DWG Viewer Inside Internet Explorer."

Click on the folder labelled "CAD/Plot file format(s)". Check the boxes for dwf, dxf, dwg. Click okay. Close the viewer and now go to Directory Opus, and choose the same file, and try viewing it in filmstrip mode.

Let me know if this helps. :slight_smile:

P.S. We don't use dwf files, but--for the sake of completeness--since I saw that it is one of the options in Brava Viewer, I enabled dwf files (and also in DOpus), downloaded a sample dwf file off the Web, and was able to preview it!

Can auto cad 2009 support auto cad 2004 files and convert files back to a 2004 file? I want to use auto cad 2004 at home and be able to take my work to school in which the computer has 2004 auto cad.

This is not the AutoCAD support forum.

The Brava Free DWG Viewer also displays ACAD v12 DWG's as a plugin for opus 10. Must follow inkslinger's instruction above to the letter.
For some reason DOpus would lockup when viewing first DWG file, but resolved lockup issue after recycling computer - Viewer Works Great.
Thx for the instructions.

Hi bound,

I'm glad other people have been able to use this info. I haven't tried it out with Opus 10 yet myself, but am still running version 9. Directory Opus remains an essential workflow tool.