Another subject: How can we post drawing .dwg or dwf files for viewing.
Hi Peter,
I'm sorry - I didn't catch your question until now, and I'm afraid I don't have a perfect answer for you, yet. You can certainly attach small dwf or dwg or dxf files to posts (or if you need to post any other format you can zip it using winzip or another zip program or email the extension and it will be added to the list of permitted extensions on the forums). But as you have observed, there are two issues:
1.) By default attachments open in a new window which I like for things like xls or pdf files so I can keep the thread in the background while viewing the material referenced... this does seem to mess up the voloview plugin though. Still, you can save the attachment and open it without any trouble using the free voloview software, so I don't regard this as a major issue.
2.) The big problem though involves how PHP is compiled which by default includes a file size limit which I know you have run into. Also by default vBulletin 2.x stores attachments in the SQL database, so there is a file size limit there too which I am hesitant to mess with for performance and backup reasons (most image attachments for example are fairly small in file size, from 30k and almost always less than 400k, but especially 3d DWG files become very very large, so if a number were attached that would mean a lot more time to do the weekly SQL database backup). Also I'm not sure if I can get PHP and MySQL to handle very large multi-MB attachments right now without hurting the overall performance.
For now my recommendation for sharing larger 3d dwg/dxf files would be to upload them to your own web space and then provide a link. There are lots of places which provide free web page space, or I could probably even provide you with an FTP login if you need some web space to upload larger drawing files to show.
In the future though, I will try to make it smoother to attach larger files. When vBulletin 3.x comes out for example, it will include the option to save attachments as files rather than in the database which will make the backup process much easier (since attachments don't need to be backed up over and over again if they haven't changed for example). In the future it would also be very neat to integrate a space with the gallery and the forums where our members could upload drawing files to show or to share and have the software automatically create thumbnails, etc. from them and lots more, but I haven't figured out if there is any easy way to facilitate this yet. I am interested in doing something like this, but I can't offer any ETA on when it might be implemented.
Sorry for the long post, and please do keep the ideas coming for how the site & forums can be improved. I can't promise I will be able to implement them all right away, but I do really appreciate the good ideas and I'll do my best to work on them as soon as possible or put them in place as soon as a workable solution (software) comes along which can be adapted for our members' needs.