Using Project Freewheel to AutoGenerate thumbnails

When I was authoring the Beyond the Paper blog, I got a lot of questions from users asking how to convert their TIF files to DWF files. I usually cautioned them that by already having "image data," converting to DWF is of limited value. DWF files really shine when they contain "vector data" that can be scaled to desired sizes. When you enlarge image data, you get fuzzy pixels. The case below is an exception. Here is a case where a DWF file was created from an image, so that Project Freewheel could be used to create a thumbnail. Since thumbnail images do not include the interactive viewer of Project Freewheel, there will be no zooming, and hence, no fat pixels.

Software Engineering Evangelist, Brian Pene, notes that if you have a DWF file, you can use Project Freewheel to create a thumbnail image of your DWF file. The steps are quite simple. Brian Pene provides an example using the floor plan for Autodesk University 2007:

1. Post the DWF file to a web server. For this example, Brian Pene has his sample DWF file at:
   http://www.cadoogle.com/share/AU07_Layout_Maps.dwf

2. Use the Project Freewheel to Image webservice URL to generate a thumbnail image of your DWF. Call the DWF to Image service via the Freewheel Image Service URL:
   http://freewheel.labs.autodesk.com/DWFImage.aspx

3. Add the following string parameters to this URL to tell the service how to render your DWF file as an image:
   
   ?path=http://www.cadoogle.com/share/AU07_Layout_Maps.dwf
   This tells the service the location of the DWF file.
   
   &sec=4
   This specifies which page to load. You can change this to another value to load other page numbers in the DWF file).
   
   &width=226
   This specifies the width in pixels of the image to create.
   
   &height=210
   This specifies the height in pixels of the image to create.

4. Using the above conventions, you get an image as follows based on the full URL:
   
   http://freewheel.labs.autodesk.com/DWFImage.aspx?path=http://www.cadoogle.com/share/AU07_Layout_Maps.dwf&sec=4&width=226&height=210
   
   You can copy/paste this into the Image location in word or even in an HTML document src tag. The below image was created using the above URL.
   
   

Making thumbnail images that stay in sync with design changes is alive in the lab.