Have you ever wondered how you can pre-populate your custom notes included in an eTransmit transmittal package? This is one of those secret AutoCAD Ninja trick that is not well known.
First an overview of eTransmit for those that may not be aware of this awesome feature of AutoCAD. eTransmit used to be an AutoCAD Express Tool many years ago named Pack n Go. With eTransmit you can organize a transmittal set of files including drawings, spreadsheets and more using the Add Files option, reference files like fonts and more packed into a single folder (or preserve folder structure), Zip file, or self extracting EXE. You can convert the DWG files to a specific DWG version, bind external references “Xrefs”, set the plotter to None, purge, password protect, and send as an email. eTransmit is not only a great way to pack up files to send externally, but a great way to quickly take all files from multiple directories and formats and with one click set to a single directory and the required format.
When creating a eTransmit transmittal package of drawings you might be entering the notes for your companies standard transmittal form or your notes to a client such as instructions, contract text and legal disclaimers manually. There is a way to set the default notes text used by eTransmit. You simply create a text file named etransmit.txt in your support directory. Now the notes field will be pre-populated with your standard text automagically.
You can easily select the View Report option to see the text and all correct files are listed and ready to go to insure your customer/client receives the files in the format requested along with your standard transmittal text.
Share the tip to fellow eTransmit users and if you don’t use eTransmit give it a try.
Cheers,
Shaan
Wow, Can this work for archiving the files as well?
Yes, you can use eTranmit as a easy and fast way to archive files and projects.
Best Regards,
Shaan
great post. we use etransmit for most of our project when sending drawings to clients, architects, developers and contractors.
tony
senior design tech
Dallas, Texas
Thanks for the fast reply, I actually was wondering about the archive feature to “auto populate” notes. I did a little experiment, and yes. You do the exact same steps as the etransmit, but you name the file “archive.txt”. Then when doing the archive it pulls those notes in just like the etransmit.
Thanks again Shaan,
I enjoy reading your blog. It is always informative and helpful.
Best regards,
Eli
I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve begged my customers to have their clients who supply them with CAD files to etransmit the CAD files because of missing XREF’s. I loose on average between 2 to 14 days time waiting for XREF’s. Recently it took 2 months for the originator of the CAD files to understand after multiple emails explaining initially via words and finally with screen prints showing the referenced files missing.
The big plus is you get the plot configuration file so you don’t have to figure out the line widths to be plotted of the layers/colours
Hi,
is it posible to creat a e-mail with “etransmit” in HTML format?
Best Regards,
Jan Willem Zeilemaker
Holland
Dear Shaan,
i just came across your blog and its been a great learning experience.
is there an option for etransmitting a whole set of files in a folder by just choosing the folder and it etransmits the whole folder drawings automatically or do we have to etransmit individually each file ?
Best regards
Abbas Reza
Architect
You can choose to eTransmit the entire directory structure or a single file and it dependant files.
It is really powerful and flexible.