Viewport to Drawing

[Tom Klaber]

I would love a way to take a cropped annotated viewport and convert it into a editable drawing.

I have created large complex full building sections for a project and then created cropped viewports to create my details. I then annotated these viewports. I now want to use this detail for another project but of course I can not 'flatten' that viewport into a drawing and copy it over.

I know you can 'Convert to Lines" which gets close to what I want to do, but all my polygons, hatches, fills, and text disappear when I do that. What we need is a "Viewport to Drawing" command that will clip all polygons and lines to the viewport crop, and move all objects in the annotations into the drawing.

[CipesDesign]

Yes, it's a big issue. It is possible to cut n paste, but it requires tedious patience and the re-creation of whatever Design and Sheet Layers are used, as well as the cropping objects and annotations... Too many steps to really useful, and enough steps that there is a large chance of error.

One other suggestion: although the result will not be editable, you can Export those details as graphics (JPG's or other) then Import them into another file. Not saying I recommend this, but it will work, as long as the details are exactly the same form job to job (mine never are).

[Tom Klaber]

Yeah.

The copying has saved me once, but it was a huge process and headache. I am actually trying to build a detail library for the office, so I am trying to avoid bring anything but the finished detail itself.

I am going to experiment with some exporting / re-importing to see if I can take advantage of viewports being clipped in that process.

[CipesDesign]

Tom, here's the way that works best for me. This method assumes that details will always (or at least most often) be displayed at the same size and scale from project to project.

Forget about VP's. Do all of the detail drawing and noting in a Design Layer. Use a consistent sized "box" for each detail. You can either cut n paste directly or you can select all and paste into a new doc very quickly. Then after that you can make VP's from each detail in order to place on a specific part of a specific sheet.

This method also allows for easy editing of each detail as required, as all the data is on one layer.

[Tom Klaber]

Yeah. That is the system that we are going to be moving to. Up to know we have favored drawing full detail sections of the building and then 'zooming in' via viewports for the details. It was a lot more drawing, but we usually encountered enough design conflicts to make the practice worth it, but now we are finding it is harder to incorporate that work into new projects because it is tied up in whole building sections.

I am closing in on work around that involves VW -> PDF -> Open in ILLUSTRATOR > Export as DWG > Import into VW. There are still some problems, but I am hoping I can this to work.

[bcd]

Have you tried exporting the Sheet Layer as a dwg directly and importing that back in.

It preserves the annotation crop & layer structure.

[Kevin McAllister]

I thought you could export a sheet layer directly as a DWG. That would make your round trip as VW Sheet->DWG->Import into VW.

KM

[Tom Klaber]

You can export a sheet layer as DWG, but they way it is translated is that VW creates a Modelspace copy of all the design layers associated with that sheet layer, and then creates a paper space that references the information on the model space. When you import it back into VW, you end up with Viewports again.

Unless I am missing something, because I have not gotten that convoluted workflow to work.

[Kevin McAllister]

If you export a single sheet and check "Export Viewports as 2D Graphics in Model Space" everything comes into model space. It seems to group them into symbols but it was more successful than I expected.

KM

[Tom Klaber]

I was excited when I saw that. It brings them in as symbols with embedded Design Layer View ports that referenced the full material, so I was still unable to extract the information. Frustrating!

Ill keep at it and keep you posted.