Home

Download, Register VW psCombine

Creating a VW Plan Set as one multipaged PDF

• Use VW PSCombine to combine the sheets from a VW file in one multipaged PDF.
• Benefits:
  • Archive plans as a PDF file (often under 1 meg in size)
    • Archived sets can also create a snapshot of the plan development at a certain date. While development occurs on a VW file a dated PDF file can be used as a reference to review and mark up changes.
  • Readable across platforms. VW not necessary to view.
  • Small PDF sizes makes it easy to transfer plans by email.
  • Free Acrobat Reader and Bookmarked PDF Plan set makes it easy for anyone to navigate, print, zoom , review
  • Quick to Reference & Print additional copies of plan set.
  • Send a PDF plan set to a client, engineer or sub for quotes or review
  • Send a PDF plan set to a print service.
• Simple Example PDF: Combined.pdf approx 110k

Requires:

• Mac OS X 10.23+
• AppleScript UI Scripting -installation needed to automatically operate menus, type text and click buttons
• Combining PDF files requires Adobe Acrobat 5.0
• Combining Postscript files requires Adobe Acorbat 5.0 or Macps2pdf (part of MacGhostView)

Description of Process:

This creation process uses VW psCombine to create a folder of PS or PDF files and used again to create a multi-page PDF.

• The best quality PDFs are created using postscript files. See Creating Distiller PDFs in MAC OSX
• Acrobat 5 is necessary to create bookmarked PDFs
• Macps2pdf seems to create the smallest PDF file sizes
• Some more OS X printing tips
• 2 Diagrams below show how Saved Sheet names are used in bookmarked PDF

  Naming the sheets in VW will determine the page order of the PDF

Use VW psCombine to:

• Save multiple selected sheets to PDF files (note 2)
• or Save multiple selected sheets to PostScript files (note 2)
• NOTE: At this time saving PostScript files provides the best quality PDFs at smallest file sizes.

Use VW psCombine to:

• Combine a folder of PDF files into one multi-paged bookmarked PDF using Adobe Acrobat 5 (note 3)
• Combine a folder of PostScript files into one multi-paged bookmarked PDF using Adobe Acrobat 5 (note 3)
• Combine a folder of PostScript files into one multi-paged PDF using Macps2pdf(note 3)

1. (removed).
2. PDF or postcript files will be replaced when a file with the same name already exists at the folder location. This makes it easy to update pages to an existing folder. The new pages automatically replace older existing pages with the same name.
3. The multi paged PDF created will be named "Combined.pdf" and saved in the folder with its source pages. The file "Combined.pdf" will be ignored by the combine scripts and replaced with a new "Combined.pdf" when the process is completed. The new "Combined.pdf" automatically replaces any older existing "Combined.pdf". If you rename the "Combined.pdf" without moving it out of the pages folder...CombineX PDFs will see it as just another pdf and try to combine it a second time into a "Combined.pdf"