Batch plotting pdfs from GeoMedia Professional's BatchPlot Utility

Intergraph did not include the capability to plot PDF files from the BatchPlot utility of GeoMedia Professional. Instead Intergraph recommend users to make use of Adobe Distiller to automatically convert any plot files generated by BatchPlot in a watch directory into PDFs.

I have a couple of alternative methods to create PDFs in batch mode. One of the methods involve the use of a free PDF printer called PDFCreator and which I shall describe here. It can be downloaded from this web site. Here is the procedure to use PDFCreator to create PDF files from BatchPlot.


By default, the PDFCreator installer creates a virtual printer with the name PDFCreator. The printer is automatically configured to create temporary PDF documents from any print job submitted to it; and the user will have to manually save the PDF document to a desired name and location. If BatchPlot submits a lot of print jobs to the PDFCreator printer, then manual saving would be quite troublesome. So it would be better if we enable the Auto-Save feature for the PDFCreator printer and define an output print folder.

Configure PDFCreator

1. Select Start | All Programs | PDFCreator | PDFCreator.
   
   The PDFCreator - PDF Print monitor dialog box appears.
   
2. Select Printer | Options.
   
   The Options dialog box appears.
   
3. On the list on the left side, select Auto-save.
4. Toggle on Use Auto-save.
5. Toggle on Use this directory for auto-save.
6. Click [...] and select a directory.
   
   
7. Ensure After auto-saving open the document with the default program is toggled off.
   
   Note: by default, the PDF file is saved with the prefix {datetime}. I could not find a way to automatically name it from BatchPlot. So datetime is the best alternative.
8. Click Save.

Use BatchPlot to submit print jobs to PDFCreator

1. On the Windows Desktop, select Start | All Programs | GeoMedia Professional | Utilities | Batch Plotting.
   
   The Batch Plotting dialog box appears.
   
2. Select File | Open. Browse and choose a saved Batch Plotting File e.g. batchPlot.gbp. Click Open.
   
   
3. Select File | Print.
   
   The Print dialog box appears.
   
4. In the Name combo box, choose PDFCreator.
5. Click OK.
   
   BatchPlot submits print jobs to the PDFCreator printer.
   
   
   The PDFCreator Print monitor shows the list of submitted print jobs.
   
   
   Finally, the PDF files are created in the output directory.
   
   
   The only problem with this method is that the PDF files must be renamed manually. Note that the plot order is in the same order as the order BatchPlot reads the map content features from the input warehouse - knowing this can help a little in renaming the files correctly.