Digital vs. Paper

[DaveVikingPE]

I really like Adobe Acrobat and the .pdf documents it produces.

What about CAD files, though? I'm very familiar with the CALS format, but is it any good, really?

Thoughts?

 

[MadMango]

Some of our CAD files are saved as PDF so they can be uploaded to our website. There, authorized people are allowed to download them as maintenance and service guides. The PDF format works well, and the viewers of course are free.

I've never heard of CALS, what program generates them? "Happy the Hare at morning for she is ignorant to the Hunter's waking thoughts."

 

[DaveVikingPE]

CALS stands for "Continuous Acquisition and Life-Cycle Support" and it refers to a US Government & Military raster standard. IPLOT or APLOT will generate a CALS file from a CAD document, same as printing to Acrobat. Microstation will display CALS raster files. They're sort of like .pdf documents, but exclusively for CAD. It's handy if you need to give people a lot of drawings and don't have to worry about what CAD platform they're using; that is, include a CALS viewer on a CD with lots of drawings and you have nice little design drawing package.