shift1313 Posted November 18, 2008 Share Posted November 18, 2008 It happens quite often that i transfer my cad files to another employee to use in photoshop/illustrator, and often he sends me a jpeg that i import as a raster image file in cad. My question is: what does eps file type buy you? He can open up a dwg file just fine but it doesnt retain its scale. its fit to screen. Same thing with the eps format. we thought eps might retain some scaling info. I guess really i want to know if there is a way to send him a file and keep its scale. Right now I put dimmensions on the files for him but this is not an accurate way for me to do things. Thanks!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shift1313 Posted November 19, 2008 Author Share Posted November 19, 2008 nobody has used this before? oh well ill keep experimenting and see what i come up with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
f700es Posted November 19, 2008 Share Posted November 19, 2008 Well Shift maybe remind him that he can open a DWG with Illustrator and if that doesn't work maybe try printing him a PDF to scale. I have done this before when I worked at another company and I had to send things to the marketing department. Maybe these will help. Sean Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hotrodz0321 Posted November 19, 2008 Share Posted November 19, 2008 he should be able to open dwg in illustrator...i can try dxf as well Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shift1313 Posted November 20, 2008 Author Share Posted November 20, 2008 thanks guys. He can open up dwg files just fine, only there is no scaling carried over. Its fit to page when he opens it. Here is a for instance. We design and develop instrumentation equipment. Its common for me to design a housing for a component and have buttons incorperated. Then its common for him to make a sticker for the face. Currently i send him my dwg and he scales it so its close, but i would like to send him a 5" wide piece and have it be 5" wide on his scale. Ill try makig a pdf because i havent done that one yet. So far there is a reasonable amount of fudge room but each thing we develop gets smaller and smaller and the need for precise scaling between formats will become critical, so im just thinking ahead. Thanks and ill report back on the pdf. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Secretagdan Posted November 20, 2008 Share Posted November 20, 2008 When importing/exporting the drawings to and from Illustrator and Auto CAD, the scales get out of whack. All that you need to do is know what size they are supposed to be in one program or the other, and scale the items appropriately. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shift1313 Posted November 20, 2008 Author Share Posted November 20, 2008 pdf goes in fine but still no scale. Secretagdan, so what your saying is there is no good way to bring something in keeping the same scaling info? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Secretagdan Posted November 20, 2008 Share Posted November 20, 2008 Yes. When importing, with either program, it will always be out of scale. Again, if you know the actual size, it can easily scale it to the right size. It will just take a bit of coordination with you and your graphics department. The other problem with importing the Illustrator graphics is everything is splines. I usually keep a running OSNAP, so when I want to move or modify the imported image, Auto CAD crashes. If you explode the graphic, to single lines, then run the FLATTEN command, it eliminates that problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shift1313 Posted November 20, 2008 Author Share Posted November 20, 2008 thanks for the hints. our graphics department is 1 guy and he is in the cube next to me(the cad dept) so coordination isnt going to be an issue. I was just hoping there was someway to get the drawing formatted to scale so there was no error in that sense. Its rare for me to take one of his drawing files and do something with it but it has happened. Its more common to go from dwg to illustrator. What i do is add one or two dimensions for him so he knows how to scale it. thanks for the input. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
f700es Posted November 21, 2008 Share Posted November 21, 2008 pdf goes in fine but still no scale. Secretagdan, so what your saying is there is no good way to bring something in keeping the same scaling info? Well not to doubt you but I just tried to recreate one and mine does come in to scale. I plotted a PDF from Acad-09 to 3/4" = 1'-0" and then opened in Illustrator 10. Now with my Illustrator I have a set of add-ons called "CADTools" and I set the layer scale to be 3/4" = 1'-0" and I did a dim on my Acad dim and it came up to the same size. Perhaps the graphics guy is doing something different? My CADTools only lets me set the scale of the layer it does not do any scaling of the image or I didn't when I opened this PDF. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shift1313 Posted November 21, 2008 Author Share Posted November 21, 2008 ill pass that on f700 and see if we can get it coordinated. I honestly have no experience with illustrator so im not sure what he is doing. Thanks for the input and ill report back if i can/can't get it to work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
f700es Posted November 21, 2008 Share Posted November 21, 2008 ill pass that on f700 and see if we can get it coordinated. I honestly have no experience with illustrator so im not sure what he is doing. Thanks for the input and ill report back if i can/can't get it to work. Cool, I hope it helps. When I was with Krispy Kreme the VP of design would do some goofy thing to scale things in Illustrator and I showed him how I could print a PDF to scale in ACAD and bring into Illustrator at scale. He was a maccie and thought PCs were poopoo Needless to say after I showed him I did ACAD to Illustrator conversions quite a bit. That was a fun job. Edit: I think he has to open the PDF in illustrator and not place the PDF in an existing file. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shift1313 Posted November 21, 2008 Author Share Posted November 21, 2008 it worked! I had no idea he had scaling options when opening the files and that was where all the confusion lied. we only tried pdf and dxf but both worked fine. We did have some funny data transfer issues. I sent him a fan shroud to him which we had waterjetted, in my cad file everything is cool but when he opens the file and zooms in on it, some of the lines are disjointed. I thought it was an interested problem. The part was drawn in 3d, exploded so i had only a 2d region(the waterjet people have less trouble with this). Have you ever had this trouble before? i uploaded the pdf and dwg if anyone is interested in looking at it. thanks, we have a setup that works the way we need. Disjointed lines wont be an issue(yet). FanGuard.dwg FanGuard-Model.pdf Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Secretagdan Posted November 24, 2008 Share Posted November 24, 2008 I don't use a water-jet, but I send files to someone that will cut the files for us. Typically, when sending them a file, I always use closed poly-lines & not regions. (On our router table here it creates issues, if we use regions.) Also use the version 2000 *.dxf for the file that you use. Make sure that you purge everything as well. The attached file is what I would typically send to our water-jet people. FanGuard.dxf Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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