Many CAD users are now storing their designs as PDF files because of the advantages it offers over other traditional formats. Our article takes a quick look at the various ways in which CAD designs can be stored and why PDF files are now being chosen as the standard to save the designs in.
PDF files are becoming increasingly popular not just over the Internet but also for sharing information over email and for storing digital content. It offers great document fidelity, can be viewed uniformly across all platforms and offers multiple levels of security. This makes it possible for companies to share confidential information even across email with the help of encrypted or password-protected PDF files. Not surprisingly, many makers of hardware such as scanners now allow scans to be saved as PDF files while as software developers are developing applications aimed at enhancing the features of PDF files. For example, you can find sophisticated tools that make it easy to scan and repair PDF files that are corrupt or damaged.
Traditionally, CAD users would scan and save the technical drawings done by hand in standard formats such as BMP, JPEG or TIFF. These file formats could then be sent across by mail, used for archiving purposes or for sharing information. With a growing awareness of the strength of the PDF file format, more and more CAD users are now inclined to save their scans as PDF files. In fact, in keeping with the popularity of the PDF file format, major scanner manufacturers now provide the feature of saving scans as PDF files. However, what are the features of PDF files that truly make it so useful in saving CAD drawings scans?
- PDF files are now very popular and well-recognized. The software required to view and print PDF files is free. One can easily download it from the Adobe website and install it on one’s computer.
- PDF files are truly portable, can be viewed without any difference across multiple platforms and thus can truly be shared amongst clients and customers.
- There is growing support from hardware manufacturers and software developers for this file format ensuring that there will be no problem even in the future as far as viewing, managing, taking backups or having to repair PDF files.
- PDF files provide the ability to include comments in the file without affecting the original content that was in the file.
- PDF files are typically smaller than most other file formats enabling CAD users to quickly email them or make them available online so that clients can download them.
- PDF files offer multiple levels of security. They can be encrypted and password-protected so that only authorized persons can access the file in order to view it, copy it, modify it or print it. One can have multiple levels of security – for example, some clients may be given permission to make modifications in the document while some may be allowed only to view it.
- PDF files are highly secure against virus or other malicious attacks. Even in the rare eventuality that any of the PDF files become infected or corrupt due to a virus attacks, powerful tools such as DataNumen PDF Repair from DataNumen can scan and restore data from these files. Such tools can repair PDF files of multiple versions and more importantly, can recover both text and images from the files, ensuring that the scans stored in the PDF files are recovered in their entirety.