CADintosh problem

Do any of you have experience w/ CADintosh? I am unable to have either of two people open a CAD file I have emailed them. I have tried in .CAD format, and in .DXF, both in DOS and Windows code type. Lemke is pretty helpful w/ things, but sometimes he is pretty busy so I thought I'd ask here, too. Thanks. john

It's too big and it's getting corrupted when you email it. Also try to cat it out before sending it - sometimes they don't get saved as .dxf even if it says it was. You could convert it to .iges or .igs format which if fairly universal. Try to .tar it off for size compression and make sure you export the file first to ensure your project tables are included with the file. Let us know. I'm a CATIA Admin and would be happy to help.

Thanks

I will try what you mentioned. Lemke got back to me and said to zip it before sending, too. When I export it, to where do I export, or is it obvious once I do the export? Obviously, I am new to this. Thanks again. john

still no-go

I sent an engineer 3 CAD files, compressed as .zip. One was a standard .cad file, one was saved as .dxf in Windows flavor, and likewise in DOS flavor. The engineer could not open any of them, and opens CAD drawings from people all the time. I guess I'll look around for a different compression program and drive different formats. Arrggghh. If anyone has any other ideas, pls advise. Thanks. john

Perhaps you can .tar the files? That seems to work well with UNIX based systems. tar -cvf filename newfilename You can see what's in the tarball by typing tar -tvf newfilename and uncompress the tarball using tar -xvf newfilename

Ok

Thanks. I think I follow what all that says. I will look for a program to compress to the .tar format. One shouldn't be too hard to find.

If you are using a Mac, you should be able to do it using the command line interface (CLI) in the terminal window. Example: to compress the file or directory called "Resume" and have it be called "Resume.tar" type...

tar -cvf Resume.tar Resume

The result would be the creation of a file called "Resume.tar" with everything in the Resume directory archived into the file. You may wish to name the tar files something like filename.tar so people know it's a tar archive by it's name.

tar invokes the tar command
-cvf says to make the file and display the files being created
Resume.tar is what the archive will be called
Resume is the name of the directory or file being compressed; you can list multiple files as well Example: "tar -cvf Resume.tar fileA fileB fileC fileD" (no quotes in the actual command) will put all of the fileA~fileD files into an archive named Resume.tar.

You can get more info typing "tar --help" or "man tar" (no quotes in the actual command) on the CLI. Hope that helps.
-Dave

Thanks, XJ

Very complete, very good reply, XJ! Thanks very much. I have never used the CLI, however, and don't think I want to go there w/ my limited expertise. I'm afraid I'd type "/wipeout" or something and nuke the whole show. Mike, who wrote TarPit, said that .tar files are best suited for Mac to Mac use, and since I am going Mac to Piece of Cheese, it prolly won't work anyway. Sooooo, I'll send paper drawings and the files on a CD in various flavors; maybe not emailing them will preserve their integrity. Thanks again. john