PDF vs. CSF (Content Sealed Format)

CSF publisher processes files faster and makes them smaller than Adobe Acrobat Professional 6.

In the May issue of CAD industry publication Cadalyst Magazine, Informative Graphics' own CSF format for CAD and document publishing was featured along side Adobe Acrobat Professional 6, Bluebeam Pushbutton PDF, and CADZATION AcroPlot Pro.

A standard DWG file of 325 KB was used to compare Net-It CAD for AutoCAD CSF files with these PDF-making products. Each product was used to create a neutral (vs. native AutoCAD) file from the print command.*

Summary of the results:

Product	Adobe Acrobat Professional 6	Bluebeam Pushbutton PDF	CADzation AcroPlot Pro	IGC Net-It CAD for AutoCAD	IGC Net-It Now
Method	Plug-in to AutoCAD	Plug-in to AutoCAD	Third-party translation†	Plug-in to AutoCAD	Windows print capture
Compressed Size	1, 398 KB	2,179 KB	283 KB	218 KB	396 KB
Time to Process	2 minutes, 25 seconds	16 seconds	1 minute, 12 seconds	2 seconds	3 seconds
† While CADzation claims that "no AutoCAD application is required" to use AcroPlot, Autodesk Express Viewer Version 4.0 or newer and Autodesk DWFWriter Version 2.0 or newer are listed as system requirements. If AutoCAD 200x is installed, AcroPlot will use the application to plot a PDF file.

*The overall fidelity of each file produced by the products tested was not discussed in the review. While there might be any number of reasons for this, our assumption is that each product was able to produce a document suitable for professional use.