C3D 2012 so SLLOWWW with pdf overlay

[neilyj666]

I have a pdf underlay (7.58Mb) and need to trace areas from it to define several boundaries but C3D is so slow when it comes to panning and zooming it's almost unusable

Is there anything I can do to speed up the performance??

[Sinc]

If the PDF is a scanned image, then maybe not.

If you have a graphics program that can turn that PDF into another image format, you might try that.  Don't know if it will work any better or not.  But with a graphics program, you could turn that PDF into something like a PNG at the lowest-possible resolution that you can still use, then underlaying that image might work better.  Or it might not - Autocad seems rather bad with image handling in general, especially when compared to other programs like Microstation.

[neilyj666]

Thanks for this - it's worth a try as at the moment it is painful to use.

[neilyj666 · Accepted solution]

I used AIDE PDF to DXF Converter to create (rather large) dxf files but the edges of the boundaries were converted as polylines so I just WBLOCKED the relevant objects, moved them to relevant layers, scaled and rotated and recreated the boundaries failry quickly.

It's very annoying (and wastes a lot of time) when people don't supply the dxf/dwg versions of pdfs......

[Anonymous]

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I used AIDE PDF to DXF Converter....

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Great app I had not heard of it before. Thanks.... I got the trial version - Does the full version honor the layers in the pdf?

[neilyj666]

No it doesn't preserve the layers unfortunately - everything gets dumped into Layer H and Layer P although the colours of the original objects are (mainly) preserved.

All text and hatching is converted to line/polyline objects and polylines with a global width are converted to long thin triangles and the resulting dxf can be huge e.g. 7Mb pdf converted to 210 Mb dxf.

However it has proved useful in the past when all I had was the pdf and AutoCAD couldn't underlay pdf's

[Anonymous]

Overall I'm happy with it. the layer thing is not that big of a deal.

[KirkNoonan]

Have you tried converting it to a .dwf? In the 2012 version of Design review, you can drag a pdf file into it as a sheet and save it to a .dwf. Maybe the .dwf would perform better as an underlay, and the software would eb free.

[Anonymous]

I wouldn't consider this solved.  I think we need two options here for marking posts.  A legitimate "Solved!" and a "Bul****** Workaround!".

I think it would help the folks at Autodesk if they could sort by "Bulll**** Workarounds!" and see what issues they need to address.  Not that they really monitor these groups for feedback.  So never mind, I'm just crotchety.

[neilyj666]

If these forums actually changed anything then they would be discontinued

[Anonymous]

Thats funny.

[Anonymous]

would you mind send your drawing to me? I can help to take a look.

email: Frank.huang@autodesk.com

[opesch_]

Just for your info :

AidePDF do extract PDF layers WHEN THEY EXISTS in the PDF.... (vectors & layesrs generated by CAD apps)

and put computed entities on layer P (polylines) and H (haches) when the PDF is a bitmap image (scanned document)

1. if the PDF stay sharp when you zoom in it (so it don't become a bunch of litle squares) then it is a vector based PDF and AIDE will keep those entities as originals
2. if you could see some layers in acrobat panels then its a vector basef PDF with layers and you'll get the best results
3. if the PDF comes from a scaned document or a layered vector CAD + scanned xrefs, you can set how AidePDF shoud consider the pictures :

• keep them as xrefs pictures + vectors in their respectives layers
• convert pictures into vectorized xrefs (P & H) + vectors in their respectives layers
• convert all found pictures and PDF pages into different vectorized (P & H) DWGs

It's honestly one of the most usefull program we've bought as we always receive projects as PDF when working for bids !

[neilyj666]

Thanks for this - much of this info is new to me....!!!!

[opesch_]

You're welcome

but that hasn't yet resolved the slooooooow PDF handling inside Autocad ;o)

that's realy cool that we finaly (since 2008) have the oportunity to directly see AND snap onto linked PDF inside AutoCAD's verticals (Revit still miss that essential function !)

BUT for tiffs we had the option to enable/disable the transparency which made the zooming actions twice faster !

for PDFs we don't have that option and even if we disable the snap option, zooming when a PDF is loaded won't go faster even a bit.... 

I don't now how exactly but ACAD should handle the PDFs as a simple background bitmap when zooming or setting Snap off so that we could zoom nearly in realtime.... I hope a solution will come ASAP ;o)