Columbus

Columbus

Columbus is not only one of the easiest document management systems to use and the world's most popular choice, but is available as a free 'Personal Edition'.

What is Columbus?

Columbus is a combined navigator and viewer that allows you to organise and view data in a more structured way.

Columbus utilises a powerful viewing engine and supports many commercial file formats, including Microsoft Office, AutoCAD*, MicroStation* and Hewlett Packard HPGL/2.

Logically related files and folders can be gathered under one heading even though they are spread across multiple folders and servers around the office or globe*. This makes it easy to view, edit, redline, issue and print data regardless of the document type or where it resides.

Columbus Personal Edition

Intended for private use, where access to network resources and other professional features are not required.

Columbus Professional Edition

The fully featured Professional Edition supports the latest file formats, operates in a network environment and includes 12 months of maintenance and support.

Professional v Personal Edition Comparison
Feature	Professional	Personal
View many commercial file formats	Yes	Yes
View AutoCAD, MicroStation and Office 2007 files	Yes	No
Access network drives	Yes	No
Access FTP sites	Yes	No
Issue to FTP sites	Yes	No
Pack 'n' Show facility	Yes	No
Redlining/Mark-up	Yes	No
Document Scanning to PDF and TIFF	Yes	No
Drawing Comparison	Yes	No
File Conversion	Yes	No
Regular viewer updates for the latest file formats	Yes	No
One year's maintenance and support included	Yes	No

Benefits to your business Ease of Use. Aside from being able to organise your data easily and subsequently find it easily, Columbus' viewing capability means that anyone in your organisation can find and print documents without having the native applications installed. Project Set-Up Wizard. Pre-create an entire project structure at the outset so that participants are not left wondering where to put their documents and whether new folders are required. Issuing Documents. Issue to an Extranet site or another server on your network, make a record copy on your own server, and notify selected participants via email. CAD enabled. Automatically extract title-block information from your AutoCAD and MicroStation drawings for display in Columbus. Minimal configuration. Columbus uses your system registry to determine which application to use to edit a file. If one person uses WordPerfect and his neighbour uses M.S. Word, Columbus will correctly load the appropriate editor without any configuration. Enterprise Deployment Tool. Install or update Columbus on computers remotely. Remote users can either be logged out, logged in or can even be running Columbus whilst the application is being updated.

What is special about Columbus? Columbus has been designed to look and feel similar to Microsoft Windows Explorer making it fast and easy to use. Provides special support for AutoCAD and Microstation. Can view many commercial file formats. Can digitally mark-up (redline) most popular CAD file formats.

Redlining, Zooming & Printing You can open as many viewer windows as you need and size them to suit. Any view can be printed without requiring the software that originally created the file, and many file-types can be redlined i.e. you can add your own comments which are overlaid on the document.

Security* Why complicate your document management administration with additional security settings? Columbus looks directly into your file system, adopting the security level assigned through your user account and folder permission settings.

Viewing Columbus includes viewing technology from Rasterex. Many commercial file formats including Microsoft Office, AutoCAD, Microstation, Zip etc.

CAD enabled Title block information is automatically extracted from drawing borders by mapping Columbus fields to CAD attributes. Each project can have an unlimited number of mappings. AutoCAD previews are shown at lightning speed. Xref paths are automatically set as you move from project to project.

Speed Columbus works directly on top of your file system. There is no database that has to process multiple queries, making it one of the fastest systems around.

Document Properties Where possible, document properties including your own custom properties, are extracted directly.

Project Setup Wizard* Project structures are typically similar from project to project. The Project Setup Wizard allows you to get going quickly by creating your new project structure from standard templates. You can then adjust the structure to suit your specific project requirements. You can even create your own templates for future projects.

Issuing documents* Columbus can issue any selection of documents to an FTP/Extranet site. The issuing process allows you to keep your own dated copies of issued files on your own server and to notify participants via email. The notification includes a transmittal report, which can be customised to suit.

No specialist staff required Columbus does not sit on top of another system or database, indeed there is no database, and that's the beauty of it. You don't need some "techie" to maintain the system and you don't need to buy and maintain any additional software or hardware. Meta-data which would typically be kept in a database is instead extracted directly from the documents properties or stored in text files one sub-folder down from where your documents reside. This makes it very fast and allows you to keep project data anywhere you choose.

* Feature only available in Columbus Professional.

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