Tailor Made Software
CAD Data Conversion and Visualization Experts

BatchConversion - Hp2Xchange

Hp2Xchange is designed for on-demand or high volume processing of Hewlett-Packard HPGL, HP-GL/2 and .PLT plotter files. Hp2Xchange converts to a wide array of vector, raster and Web-ready formats. Hp2Xchange is available on Windows, Linux, HP-UX, AIX and Solaris. Formats supported may differ depending on the platform.

The CadXchange family consists of five separate products depending on input formats; AutoXchange (DWG/DXF/DWF), DgnXchange(DGN), AcroXchange (PDF/AI), Hp2Xchange (HP-GL/2) and RasterXchange (bitmaps).

Batch Conversion

Hp2Xchange has been designed to perform batch conversion and to work as part of an automated process. Hp2Xchange does not require extensive hard drive space or memory allocation and can be installed on any PC or laptop computer.

Hp2Xchange is a “command line driven” program. It is designed to be used in on-demand or high volume applications. It can be easily executed by another program or a CGI script for automated processing. If that does not work for you, a DLL-based version is available on Windows and a static library version is available on Linux and many Unix platforms

Enhanced PDF Output

Hp2Xchange features the most advanced PDF output of any CAD conversion tool. It supports 40 and 128-bit encryption, multiple levels of compression, password protection of PDF files, numerous levels of permission setting, advanced font support and a whole lot more.

Of course, it uses vector PDF for the highest fidelity, not raster PDF of questionable quality. Hp2Xchange also features greatly improved vector PostScript and Encapsulated PostScript output.

Feature Recognition

Tailor Made Software's proprietary Feature Recognition, a standard element of Hp2Xchange, preserves features such as arcs, circles and ellipses instead of transliterating line segments. The result? More compact files that don't suffer from a loss in detail. In addition, Feature Recognition speeds up conversion while preserving a file's contents.

Multiple File Conversion

Hp2Xchange can perform multiple file conversion operations, including user-configurable wildcard specifications, allowing a user to convert one, a few or all of the files in a directory or directory tree.

Raster Output

Hp2Xchange can automatically create many raster output formats including JPEG, TIFF, CCITT TIFF (or TIFF Group IV), GIF and PNG files for a wide range of raster drawing needs.

For web use we recommend GIF or PNG over JPEG. JPEG may be more widely used, but it is not well suited for output of line drawings. PNG (Portable Network Graphics) is the format widely touted as the replacement for GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) files since GIF files were subject to royalties to Unisys up until June 22nd, 2004.

If your application can support them, then TIFF Group IV is the the best format for line drawings. It only supports Black and White, but it is highly compressed and large drawings with high resolution are possible while still maintaining small file size.

The raster formats supported depend on the operating system used, with some limitations on AIX and HP-UX.

Multiple Operating Systems

Hp2Xchange supports the following operating systems:

Windows 7, Windows Vista,Windows XP, Windows 98, Windows 95

Windows NT 3.51 and above, Windows 2000, Windows 2003 Server,Windows 2008 Server

Ubuntu Linux 6.06 and above

Debian Linux 1.1 and above

Red Hat Linux 6.0 and above

Sun Solaris 2.5 and above

HP HP-UX 10.2 and above

AIX 4.1.5 and above

Formats supported may different depending on the platform.