Use an Access 97 button to open a .dwg file through an Autocad viewer

[Cosmark]

I have designed a database which is used to control inventory items. Each item is associated with an Autocad drawing (.dwg). I can very easily create another field to store the path of each drawing. The drawings are created and maintained by another department using Autocad. The whole system in our company is networked (Win NT).

So far so good...

I want to be able to allow users, through a button on a form to open, view or print (but NOT modify) the relevant drawing throught a viewer, since they do not have Autocad installed on their computers.
Does anyone have any experience in this? Any good Autocad viewers (free on not )out there that will allow me to do exactly this ?

Your advise will be appreciated.

Thanks
Cosmark

 

[UncleJack]

You can use the Shell function to launch the autocad viewer and then, depending on the viewer, possibly pass the path and name of the .dwg file to the application. You can also associate .dwg file types in Windows with the Autocad viewer and then shell to the .dwg file. Windows should recognize the .dwg file type and launch the viewer with the drawing passed as a parameter.

Uncle Jack