surreal73 Posted May 31, 2005 Share Posted May 31, 2005 I'm using Vectorworks 10.5 and have some pdf files that I would like use as templates on VW. What is the easiest way to do this? I tried to save the pdf's as jpeg's and then import them but that wasn't to effective. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Joe Quote Link to comment
Kaare Baekgaard Posted June 1, 2005 Share Posted June 1, 2005 You can import them directly as image files, but the resolution is quite low. Or you can open them in Photoshop or similar program and export them as you already know. If you've got Acrobat (not the reader), alt-click the image and you will get the option to open it in an image editing program of your choise. Then save them as jpegs. Or you can take a partial screendump (with mac thats alt-shift-4) - the resolution will be dependent of your monitor resolution and the zoom level. I use Snapz Pro for this purpose, because it allows me to put the screendump on the clipboard and paste it directly into VW. Are the PDF's pixelbased? - if not, you can open them in Illustrator and export the paths as DWG-files. That would save you from tracing them by hand. Quote Link to comment
Fred Perkins Posted June 1, 2005 Share Posted June 1, 2005 If you have acrobat, you can save it as an esp and import that into vectorworks. This will keep vector data as vectors so it will print much better. Fred Perkins Quote Link to comment
Lucid Phil Posted June 1, 2005 Share Posted June 1, 2005 D'you mean .eps Fred? I got all excited and tried this. It imported OK but all that showed was a grey box with diagonal lines..!? I'm obviously doing something wrong, any hints? Quote Link to comment
Lucid Phil Posted June 1, 2005 Share Posted June 1, 2005 Ok, I persevered, changed a few settings and upped the raster/vector balance to 100% vector. I got something readable, seemingly to scale but still only a rather fuzzy bitmap. Changing the export resolution to 2400 dpi didnt seem to affect this. Does this mean the original PDF was made with a bitmap? I had assumed it was from a CAD program, it certainly looks that way. I can do better than this with a screen capture, only not to scale. Any guidance welcome :-) Quote Link to comment
Nick_Reid Posted June 1, 2005 Share Posted June 1, 2005 EPS import in VW prints fine but what you see on screen will only be the preview component. Which is why it has the jaggies. If you have Adobe CS then you can convert it to dwg format using Illustrator (assuming it's a vector PDF not raster). Photoshop is the safest route but save the PDF as a Mac PICT file. Graphic Converter on the mac will also do this for you much cheaper. If its a monochrome image then a 1 Bit pict can be imported and converted to vector data within VW. However, I found that you can spend ages cleaning up the conversion to get something acceptable. These days I just use 1 bit picts at 300DPI. Simple but effective. Their colour can be changed in VW by giving them a pattern fill and changing the pattern colours. If you then set the fill attribute to none then the bitmap will have the new colour with a transparent background. Quote Link to comment
Lucid Phil Posted June 1, 2005 Share Posted June 1, 2005 Hey thanks Nick, I'm on PC so used the PC equivalents and BINGO, a vector drawing that I could export as a DWG. The trick was not to import into my graphics program (Corel 10) but to OPEN the eps file with it. The resulting DWG has thousands of objects in it so I'll have to fine tune the process but basically it works. I learned something tonight..! Quote Link to comment
Fred Perkins Posted June 2, 2005 Share Posted June 2, 2005 All you see with eps is a low res preview, so this is not a good solution if you want to interact with it. But, if it is a graphic or some such thing it is great because the preview redraws quickly and the print looks perfect. Quote Link to comment
stoshw Posted June 18, 2005 Share Posted June 18, 2005 I import pdf floorplans by converting them to tif file from Adobe Acrobat. You must have the full program not the free reader program. I then convert the tif file to a pct and import to VW. Then I size them, usually using the width of a double door as 6'-0" if I don't have a scale. Then I draw over them. I have tried various freeware file converters and every time I import the dwg file the results contain hundreds of extra lines so the trace is the quickest method. Quote Link to comment
Jim Smith Posted June 19, 2005 Share Posted June 19, 2005 I have seen a demo of Scan 2D that seems to do a pretty good job of converting to vectors. As far as I know it is only available for PC's. I may be wrong, but I think it will also convert PDF's to vectors. Here is the link I have:(http://www.softcover.com/ Good Luck Quote Link to comment
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