IN THIS ARTICLE
Creating and modifying eTransmit package in AutoCAD
An AutoCAD drawing may contain lots of external data in the form of X-ref, font styles, images, excel tables, textures, materials for 3D drawings and other components. Once you have finished working on a project you need to ensure that you transmit all of these external files to make it easy for end user to work on the project without searching for the missing components.
But selecting external files manually is a time consuming and error prone task, AutoCAD has a tool called eTransmit which makes this task very fast and easy. It creates a package of all drawing dependent elements in the form of a ZIP file or folders.
To use eTransmit make sure you have saved your drawing. After saving click on application button on the top left of your AutoCAD window and click on Publish and then eTransmit option as shown in the image above.
Create Transmittal window will pop up with a tree view of all attachments in your drawings, if you want to view it in list view you can switch to Files Table tab.
In the tree view, you will find current drawings panel where all attachments will be visible. You can add multiple files in the eTransmit package by clicking the Add File button on the bottom of Current Drawings panel as shown in the image below.
Below you will find Enter Notes panel where you can add notes to the package for the recipient. Once your eTransmittal file is created a report will be generated and it will be transmitted as TXT file along with complete package you can view that report using View Report button on the bottom left of the window.
On the right of create transmittal window, you will find Transmittal Setups button click on it and a new window will pop up where you can modify settings for transmittal package and save it for further use.
Click on New button and name your setup then click on Continue, now you can customize settings of the eTransmittal package using Modify Transmittal Setup window. Let’s have a look at some of the useful options of the window.
Transmittal type and location:
From Transmittal package type drop down menu of this panel, you can select the type of package to create, like a zip or a simple folder.
If your recipient uses an older version of AutoCAD then you can save drawings in an older version also using File format drop down menu.
Specify the location where you want to save the transmittal file using ellipses next to Transmittal file folder field.
Path Options:
Here you will find three radio buttons as shown in the image below.
The first radio button will make the eTransmittal package with each component in a separate folder. Place all files in one folder option will place all attached components inside a single folder.
The third option will create a structured folder such that each component will maintain its path inside transmittal package. For example, if an X-ref is placed inside folder B which is inside folder A then this transmittal will create a folder A inside folder B and then place the Xref inside folder B.
Actions:
Here you will again find multiple radio buttons but most of them are self-explanatory.
The Bind external references radio button will bind your Xref inside current drawing i.e. it will convert Xref into a block and place it in the drawing.
Purge drawings radio button will clean your drawing of all unused components like layers, blocks, and linetypes and create the eTransmit package with those cleaned drawings.
So finally…
Once you have made all required settings click on OK and close Modify Transmittal Setup window box and click OK again. Your complete package will be published at the specified location with all settings you made so far.
Do you have questions related to this tip? Let me know in the comments below.
Hi, I am familiar with e-transmit sending projects out. Is there a way to send an etransmited file back to the original sender with edits so they can reincorporate the file with edits into their file structure without losing the xref links? I believe if they over save the original file with the etransmitted file that all of the original xref links will be gone, all the xref will have to be reloaded or even re-attached. Do you know of an easy way to “reverse transmit” and e-transmited file?
Thank you so much Jaiprakash for this very well explained guide/ tip.
I really appreciate you taking the time to make this article and shear your knowledge with everyone.
Many many thank yous Jaiprakash.
I am a mechanical engineer of 15 years experience, and in all that time, myself and dozens of colleagues I have worked with over that time, I’ve never heard of this and don’t believe anyone I currently work with knows of this. To bind drawings after each project submission, we would have someone open each DWG one at a time, do a save-as, then bind xrefs in the xref manager, save the bound file, and move on to the next DWG and repeat for each. This is a cumbersome waste of time. Using eTransmit to batch-bind CAD files is a huge time efficiency gain.
Thank you so much Jaiprakash. I’ll be sure to peruse other postings of yours here that I can learn from.
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Excellent tip thank you. I have a very large project with many drawing files and many additional files. Do I have to open each CAD file individually and create an eTransmit file or can I add all my CAD files at one time to one eTransmit package? I realise that your text above refers to adding additional files but Iam not entirely clear whether this is simply adding more reference material to one CAD file or whether multiple CAD files and all their related content can be added to one package. Thank you again, regards, Paul.
Hi Jaiprakash
thank you for the well explained tip/
I’m still left with one question/ At my last work place I used to do an E-transmit’ when the path of the transmittal file folder was relative to source file location. Now the path is set to something permanent (which I know I can change), but I want it to be like before – that each time it will go to it’s right folder. I can’t remove the path because it doesn’t let me save it empty.
Do you know a way to do this ? ( I heard reset to default helps, but I prefer not to…)
Thank you :)
Hi Jaiprakash,
ETransmit does not seem to capture Excel files – do you have any suggestions?
We use Excel for our Schedules, then use “Paste Special\Paste Link” to link the Excel file to the CAD file, so any updates made in Excel are reflected in the CAD sheet.
I have experimented with “Transmittal Setups\Modify” and I can’t find a way to fix this. The “Include files from data links” box is checked, but it still isn’t capturing the Excel files.
I would appreciate any suggestions you might have. Thank you!
Hi Jaiprakash
Thanks for your very good explanation.
I am wondering if it is possible to create new setup using lisp
Thanks in advance