I'm fine with an ftp site that allows anonymous upload / download, and just posting links in the email messages, but sometimes an attachment is still appropriate, and I would like a nod that it isn't a baby-killing offense.
Putting up original turbo cad source files, and probably jpg conversions seems like the best bet. Every stock system will be able to view the jpg files, unlike ps or pdf, and if you want total accuracy, you can look at the tcw file.
Out of curiosity, what programs does XCOR use?
AutoCad 2D, and just starting to move into Solidworks. Our chief engineer Dan DeLong designs in AutoCad, and I'm just starting to delve into Solidworks, which I'm -really liking a lot-. I am also a Lightwave animator in my previous life and have been using Lightwave as a non-machine-accurate 3D renderer for pre-visualization only. (see the various Xerus renderings on our website) It's polygon based so it's good for looks only, but it's helped in visualizing some government projects as well as the pretty pictures.
Sorry I stayed out of the main part of this discussion for so long, the program you want to convert between 2D drawing formats and other vector formats is called Flat Out by Taylor Made Software. http://www.tailormade.com/
http://www.tailormade.com/products/interactiveconv/flatout.html
I use this software to convert 2D drawings into .CGM (Computer Graphics Metafile) format, which is one of the only vector formats that Microsoft Word understands that I can get to in one hop from Autocad. We make a lot of proposals and presentations in MS Word format, and all our Autocad drawings come are inserted in this way. They stay vectors in the word file, so they print sharp at any resolution. Flat Out will also convert to EPS and many other popular formats. There's a free trial download on the page.
This software will not convert from vector formats to bitmap formats such as JPEG. The best way to do that from AutoCad or Solidworks for quick preview, believe it or not, is to do an ALT-PRINTSCREEN in windows (screen capture the current highlighted window) and then crop the window borders off and save the image as a JPEG. (I do this in Photoshop, there's plenty of less expensive software that will do same, like WINDOWS PAINT) If you have a renderer for your design program, you can just render a bitmap file, but for showing really quick previews of a design with all the labels and on screen annotation attached, a screenshot is the fastest way. I do this all the time in Lightwave Modeler with the Quad window view showing all sides and a perspective render simultaneously, most recently for a fuel tank insulation design for our test stand.
The downside and upside to the screen captures is that there is no anti-aliasing/pixel blending unless your CAD software has that feature for on-screen display. This is actually an advantage most of the time for readability. It's kind of like reading small text on an LCD monitor vs. a CRT. Sharp and pixelated but easier on the eyes. If you do want an anti-aliased bitmap, screen capture at a very high resolution and scale down in photoshop using bicubic interpolation (it's the default). Then you'll have a smaller file with anti-aliasing.
If you want on-screen anti-aliased display of vector graphics, the PDF viewer does an excellent job at this, so you have both smooth curves and infinite detail when you zoom in. Not many other vector display programs have software anti-aliasing built in at the moment, but as anti-aliasing slowly becomes a hardware feature of your graphics card (John Carmack can tell you alllll about that) then we'll start seeing it work in most 3D software without having to think about it.
---Mike
John Carmack
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