Topic: CAL files?

[sinc]

What are CAL files?  What creates them?

I think I've found a number of free programs (mostly available from the military) that allow CAL files to be viewed and printed.  Anyone know one of these that they particularly like?

[CAB]

http://filext.com/file-extension/CAL

http://www.fileinfo.com/extension/cal

Looks like several CAL extension uses.

[sinc]

It looks like these are the CALS graphics format version of a CAL file.

I can open them in Paint Shop Pro, but I have hundreds of these.  Opening them one at a time in Paint Shop Pro is tedious at best.

Anyone know of a good viewer/printer for these files?  I found a few, and I could just pick one randomly and try it, but I was wondering if anyone needed to view CAL files regularly, and knew of a good free viewer/printer.

[sinc]

Hey!  Design Review will open them!

I had to browse to the Design Review exe in the Program Directories to explicitly assign the .CAL extension to Design Review, because it didn't show up in the list of available programs, but after that it seems to work just fine!

[M-dub]

We use them all the time and they ARE image files.  Ours are CALs Group 4 format.  We insert them into dwg files and modify them with Raster Design.


FWIW

[sinc]

Drat!  The Batch Print wizard in Design Review ignores CAL files!   

Guess Design Review will work for the occasional view/print, but not for printing 30 or 40 or 100 CAL files all at once.

[M-dub]

We use our EDMS to batch print those ones, but a cheap and dirty way to do it with AutoCAD only involves a little more time.

The quickest way I know of would be to drag and drop each file into a new drawing and save it... doesn't REALLY matter what you name it if you are only going to keep the file long enough to print it.  So repeat the following:
New
Drag & drop
save
close
New... and so on.

Then you can load all of those dwg's into your batch plot utility.

Also, you could try this application that Kieth wrote for me years ago.  Enables you to double click a .CAL file or .GP4 file and it will open AutoCAD, start a new drawing and insert that image at 0,0.
(I THINK it works with .cal files, anyway)

[sinc]

I suspect it's faster to simply print the pages one at a time in Design Review...

But it doesn't look like it needs to come to that.  One of my coworkers at one point downloaded a plugin that runs inside of IE, and can batch print CAL files.  So it looks as though Design Review simply is not a good tool for this purpose, because of that problem with its batch print utility.

Now, if only my coworker could remember where he got that plugin...   

[M-dub]

Just tried a quick search and ... well, I'm sure you've already discovered how many you'll have to sift through to find the one you're looking for.  Good Luck! 

[sinc]

Yeah, there do seem to be an awful lot of them...  At some point, I might try digging into it further.

But this doesn't seem to come up a whole lot, so for this task, I just went and used his computer for a few minutes...  Problem solved (for now).   

[Arizona]

Raster Design Demo Version....

[rkmcswain]

What are CAL files?  What creates them?

Our Oce scanner can create them

[ronjonp]

I'm not 100% sure, but I used this program a loooong time ago and I think it will do batch plots.

http://www.maxview.com/index.php?downloads