To publish AutoCAD documents to PDF, install Autodesk AutoCAD and configure it to run without user intervention in your Rendition Engine environment.
Follow the instructions in the Autodesk AutoCAD installation documentation to install AutoCAD on the IBM® FileNet® Rendition Engine server. To render documents accurately, Rendition Engine requires that AutoCAD run cleanly, without problems and without displaying dialog boxes or prompts. After you install AutoCAD, start the AutoCAD application to confirm that it runs properly, without opening dialog boxes, including the registration dialog boxes. As a test, temporarily copy a sample set of AutoCAD drawing files to the Rendition Engine server, open each file and view it in Print Preview mode. Verify that no dialog boxes, error messages, or warning messages display during this process. If necessary, you can correct problems by permanently dismissing dialogs and copying any missing plot style files (.ctb, .stb), and font files (.shx, or .ttf) to the Rendition Engine server. For more information about the location of these files, see the Autodesk AutoCAD documentation.
Authoring applications are developed for interactive use. Running these authoring applications on a server with the user interface hidden and with no user interaction is complex because the server might be monitored only occasionally. In some instances, you cannot use these applications with the user interface hidden.
The following procedure describes how to configure Autodesk AutoCAD to run interactively with the interface displayed when used by the LIQUENT InSight Rendering software on the Rendition Engine server to render AutoCAD files to PDF. The configuration settings also affect other authoring applications (such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel) when they are used to render documents to HTML or PDF. These other authoring applications then run with the interface displayed while rendering documents to HTML and PDF. The rendering functionality is not affected. However, these configuration settings might interfere with using the Domain Manager and other software because there are instances when the interface of the authoring application displays during the rendering process.
To configure LIQUENT InSight Rendering and Autodesk AutoCAD for rendering AutoCAD documents to PDF, repeat the following steps on each Rendition Engine: