Comparison of Two Publishing Plugins for AutoCAD

The DWF/PDF Batch Plugin for AutoCAD from Kean Walmsley has been a very popular ADN Plugin of the Month. Years ago John Schmier developed a similar plugin that was also very popular: Batch Publishing DWF Files with AutoCAD 2007. I thought I would compare the two.

Aspect	Kean Walmsley	John Schmier
Download	BatchPublish.zip	BatchDWF.zip
Compatible with	AutoCAD 2007 and later; AutoCAD 2007 and later based applications (e.g. AutoCAD Civil 3D)	AutoCAD 2007, 2008, or 2009
Environments	32-bit and 64-bit	32-bit
Publish Formats	DWF, DWFx, PDF (AutoCAD 2010 and later)	DWF
Driven by	AutoCAD BATCHPUBLISH command	BatchDWF (command line scriptable)
Can more than one source folder be specified in any one session?	Yes, the BATCHPUBLISH command has extensive configuration capabilities.	Yes, by using batch and scr files, you can run multiple source directories.
Is there an option to include files contained within sub folders?	Yes	Yes
Can publishing be scheduled at a designated time?	Yes, any process that allows AutoCAD to be started with a specified command can be used.	Yes, using the task scheduler you can kick off batch and scr files.
Can a subset of files in a source folder be specified?	File extensions DWG and/or DXF can be specified. It is possible to configure individual drawings, specifying whether to publish individual layouts or not. Choose to publish only drawings that have been modified since they were last published.	Yes, supply a standard DOS file pattern to narrow the selection of DWG files
Can Model-Space be excluded?	It is possible to ignore all the model-space sheets of the included drawings	Yes
Can publishing settings be specified?	No, Page Setups associated with each layout are applied.	Yes, apply Page Setups from other drawing files for both the Model and Layouts
Is Layer information published?	Layer information is determined by AutoCAD settings.	Yes, there is an option to include or exclude layer information.
Can 3D files be published?	No.	Yes, there is an option to create 3D DWF files.
Can plot stamps be published?	No.	Yes, there is an option to include a standard plot stamp in the DWF.
What type of logging is available?	A log file can be found in each of the target folders describing the results of the batch publish.	Detailed logging, providing a full list of files and sections that were published is generated.
Error handling	Upon restart, the process will resume where it left off before abnormal termination (e.g., AutoCAD hang, dialog while opening files, crash).	The process can be rerun.
Source Code	C#: Included, Visual Studio 2008	C#: Included. Visual Studio 2005

Since the source code for both plugins is included, this would be a great opportunity for someone to take one and extend it to provide all or some of the capabilities of the other. If anyone is up to the challenge, let us know your results at [email protected].

Posing possibilities regarding CAD data publishing is alive in the lab.