Image Tracing Help

Hello fourm folks. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I provide estimates and produce shop drawings for contractors in the metal wall and roofing industry. I am usually provided with PDFs of the contract drawings. The PDF types I receive can be both vectorized and rasterized, it just depends on the how many hands the drawings went through before they got to me. My typical method for doing both of the above tasks is to insert the drawings sheets into Acad, scale appropriately then trace over the underlay. Unfortunately, PDF underlays crush my systems performance in regards to panning and zooming. I can't handle the lags and delays without loosing my sanity. I've done some research on the forums and found that any of the image formats are better then PDF's as underlays.

Here are the (2) requirements I have for this procedure:

1) An image type that has the least impact on my systems performance.? I'm running Acad 2012 Lt 64 bit on Windows 7 64 bit virtualized through Parallels 7 on an iMac i7 3.4 gH Quad Core with 8 gigs of ram with an AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2 gig video card. Yes I know this setup has inherent performance issues but my Acad drawings are simple 2D drawings that aren't very resource intensive. The only thing that eats up resources is the attached images. Hence, the reason for this post. I've already tried Bootcamp. Major PITA to reboot all the time.

2) The attached image underlay must have a transparent back ground. I can't handle the lack of contrast with a white/paper background.

Can you recommend an image file type that can satisfy both of these requirements and software that can handle this operation?

Robert

Also, if you have a better method to my madness, I'm open to suggestions. I'm looking for the most efficient method to do estimates and shop drawings. It would be nice if I could get the architecturals in DWG format, but that's almost never going to happen. The one time it did, it was a disaster because of the way the architect packaged the files. It was block, inside of block, inside of block. Darn near impossible to work with. I've tried some of the raster to vector programs, but I end up spending as much if not more time fixing the drawings once they are converted. However, that was several years ago when most of the drawing sets I received were scanned in from hard copy. Now, most of the drawing sets I receive originated as digital sets. The drawings sets that I recieve that are raster images were probably originally digital vetor sheets that were saved as a raster image file. I guess maybe I should give those raster to vector programs another shot???

i don't need to do htis ofte but when i do I use dwf. I open the pdf file and from the print menu i select dwf writer and print it to dwf file than i insert that file as dwf underlay in my drawing. it does not come with transperent background but it works much better than pdf.

I do this on a regular basis. I have not had the luxory of being able to insert PDFs, yet. I always use tif files. I can't rember why, just that I've been doing that way for years. In the properties box there is an option for "Transparency". It's a toggle, on and off. It makes it so that Autocad objects can be seen through the image. There is an AutoCAD option that might be of help with the performance issues when panning and zooming with PDFs. See attached image (lol).

Your dialog box may look different.

The Mac OS comes with preview which is similar to Adobe Viewer only more powerful. It allows me to change the file type from PDF to Tiff, JPG, PNG... I can take a PDF and save as a black and white PDF then do another save as any of the images files. However, none of these will be transparent when I switched the properties button you mentioned. That's why I'm looking for a 3rd party software that y'all know will work.

I'll try that display setting. I don't recall seeing that button before.

I'm sorry. The box in the options is called "Background Transparency". Select "Yes" not "No" as shown in the image.

I don't have the option you've circled under my display tab. Several others are missing as well. Are you running the full version of Acad. I'm got Lt so it may be an Lt thing.

Yes, I've tried clicking that button with all of the different image file types available to me through preview and then regening to make sure. None of them worked. I'm hoping for a 3rd party software recommendation to fix that. I have some PDFs that attach with the transparent background that I have converted to all the different image file types and inserted and clicked that button and it just won't work for me.

Sorry about that. If the option is there, it should work. I use it quite frequently. I don't know what else to say.

Still looking for recommendations on 3rd party software that can convert PDFs to an image file type that doesn't unnecessarily bog down Acad and will allow the use of the transparency button.

Good luck with that. I'd send the PDF out and have it digitized by some offshore company.

Several have been discussed here and there are many threads with recommendations. I believe your difficulties stem from being LT and/or MAC OS. Full Windows AutoCAD has transparency for all of the image types you named.

I usually just redraw from scratch anyway, in the long run seems to be quicker in many instances.

I was in Memphis last week, too bad I missed your post. Where in Memphis be you?

Still looking for recommendations on 3rd party software that can convert PDFs to an image file type that doesn't unnecessarily bog down Acad and will allow the use of the transparency button.

Do it almost every day.

Pdf to dxf. Here is a link:

http://www.cadkas.com/downengpdf11.php

Try it, it is worth $50 (full version)

SLW,

I'm in Germantown which is a burb just outside of Memphis. I was born in West Palm Beach and raised in Lake Worth down in your neck of the woods though. Your right, it is definitely quicker to redraw. I redraw everything too, but it's easier to redraw if I just use the pdf as an underlay and trace it. Once I redraw the background, I turn off the pdf and then add my stuff to it to complete the detail, roof plan or elevation. I have found that the fade option works better in 2012 than 2010. In 2010, when you fade an image, the cursor/crosshairs would always be underneath the drawing. Nothing I could do to get it to be on top and visible. You could only see it when you passed through something black on the image like text or a drawn line. Aggravating!!! Now, in 2012, that seems to be fixed. Fading it is almost as good as it being transparent.

MBD,

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll give that a try.