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PDFs in your workflows

37 REPLIES 37
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Message 1 of 38
micah.dickerson
2077 Views, 37 Replies

PDFs in your workflows

The AutoCAD team is conducting a research study about how PDFs are used in users' regular workflows, and we'd like to invite you to participate. The feedback you provide will be used to help improve AutoCAD. The online survey will take about 15 minutes to complete, and your responses will be kept strictly confidential.

To share your feedback and experiences, just follow this link: http://v2.decipherinc.com/survey/selfserve/9e2/crb14025?list=1&origin=paf

If you are interested in participating please be sure to take the survey right away, but not after December 5, 2014. The survey is being hosted and reported by independent research firms: Cooper Roberts Research, Inc. and Decipher, Inc.

Thanks in advance for your support!


Micah Dickerson

Senior Product Manager

37 REPLIES 37
Message 2 of 38
tcorey
in reply to: micah.dickerson

I like the questions you're asking...



Tim Corey
MicroCAD Training and Consulting, Inc.
Redding, CA
Autodesk Gold Reseller

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. -- Kurt Vonnegut
Message 3 of 38
Neilw_05
in reply to: micah.dickerson

Nothing about 3D PDF output?
Neil Wilson (a.k.a. neilw)
AEC Collection/C3D 2024, LDT 2004, Power Civil v8i SS1
WIN 10 64 PRO

http://www.sec-landmgt.com
Message 4 of 38

It would be tremendous if you could find a way to not have pdf files drastically reduce the speed of the drawings they are inserted in....

John Gordon
CAD Manager/Survey Technician

C3D 2018/2020
Microstation
Windows 10
Message 5 of 38
neilyj666
in reply to: johngordon6189

Absolutely - it's quicker to take a screendump, insert the image and manually scale it

neilyj (No connection with Autodesk other than using the products in the real world)
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AEC Collection 2024 UKIE (mainly Civil 3D UKIE and IW)
Win 11 Pro x64, 1Tb Primary SSD, 1Tb Secondary SSD
64Gb RAM Intel(R) Xeon(R) W-11855M CPU @ 3.2GHz
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Message 6 of 38

I think most of the time the PDF driver is to blame, sometimes it's a bloated mess.  Take for example this innocent looking letter "S", which contained 471 objects!

 

Example: http://www.dotsoft.com/files/pdf-letter.png

 

AutoCAD doesn't know it's a letter S and has to treat it with as much importance as any other part of your file.  This users file (PDF Size 1.2mb) contained nearly 325,000 objects that obviously was bogging down AutoCAD.

Message 7 of 38

Like most surveys it was too long and I bailed out, ask for too much you get nothing.

 

+1 for 3D PDF output

 

Add GeoPDF positioning for both ISO (ESRI) & OGC (USGS) embedded data.

Message 8 of 38
dgorsman
in reply to: TerryDotson

Waffling on 3D PDF.  Fine for simpler stuff, mechanical packages and so on, but I tried to publish a large project and it just locked up.  I'd rather stick with Navisworks (which is pretty much needed anyways to bring everything together in one place).

----------------------------------
If you are going to fly by the seat of your pants, expect friction burns.
"I don't know" is the beginning of knowledge, not the end.


Message 9 of 38
nwray
in reply to: micah.dickerson

It would be great to be able to include object data into PDF's.

GIS Specialist

BOXX Technologies APEXX 2 2402 Workstation
Intel Core i7-6700K @ 4.4 GHz
32 GB RAM / 500 GB SSD
NVIDIA Quadro M2000 Graphics
Windows 7 Pro 64 bit C3D 2017
Message 10 of 38
antoniovinci
in reply to: nwray


nwray wrote:

It would be great to be able to include object data into PDF's.


We were recently talking about it, check this out: 

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-civil-3d-general/dwg-to-pdf-with-attributes/m-p/5336903

Message 11 of 38
Neilw_05
in reply to: dgorsman


@dgorsman wrote:

Waffling on 3D PDF.  Fine for simpler stuff, mechanical packages and so on,


Yes it would be very nice to be able to send 3D models to non tech folks or people that don't have the software to read special file formats. Currently there is no way.

Neil Wilson (a.k.a. neilw)
AEC Collection/C3D 2024, LDT 2004, Power Civil v8i SS1
WIN 10 64 PRO

http://www.sec-landmgt.com
Message 12 of 38
dgorsman
in reply to: Neilw_05

Just to be persnickity (thanks for the paperwork HR, not like I have *actual* work to do...) - do the non-technical folk really NEED such things?  In my experience its more of a look-at-what-a-cool-toy-I've-got rather than something beneficial.

 

And - A360.

----------------------------------
If you are going to fly by the seat of your pants, expect friction burns.
"I don't know" is the beginning of knowledge, not the end.


Message 13 of 38
Neilw_05
in reply to: dgorsman

Of course they benefit from being able to view 3D models. We all do. I make use of them regularly for communicating site models with clients, architects, subconsultants, etc. It really helps to understand a site when you can view it as a 3D model, especially if you are not accustomed to reading 2D plans..
Neil Wilson (a.k.a. neilw)
AEC Collection/C3D 2024, LDT 2004, Power Civil v8i SS1
WIN 10 64 PRO

http://www.sec-landmgt.com
Message 14 of 38

We would never use the PDF as an overlay directly. As others have stated already the performance degredation on the drawing is a real problem and is not worth the hassle.

 

The Snap function in PDF files seems to be innacurate, that is when you zoom in the snapped location moves around by some degree.

 

We would always use a application like Gimp to convert the pdf file to an image and overlay from that. Obvously with Raster you can achieve more than you could from just a PDF file. Otherwise we would just phone and request a drawing file.

 

I wonder if the way forward is to dictch pdf files altogether and include a pdf to dwg / dxf / convertor instead alike the one in Inkscape? However I expect this would upset some people..

 

As for 3d, I really don't see the need for a 3d PDF (as enabled in Revit and from some 3rd party tools), most of the team who have an intrest in viewing a 3d model (BIM / IIM etc or whatever you want to call it) should already have a viewer to use or access to one.

 

I also would question what use a 3d PDF would be?

In the case of data tags / contexts, the current NWC export only posts some selected information from Civil3d entities and is not customisable in any way (see related posts elsewhere in the forums).

 

Custom information is not passed so we need to use a DataExport / import (ODBC) with custom built tools workaround to actually pass the information we want through to the 3d "BIM" model (Ref Navisworks Forums). This is also a problem with exporting Civil3d data to SDF, the information posted is restricted so again custom workarounds are needed.

 

I have also found issues with posting Map3d data via DWF / DWFx(3d). In the case of the 3dDwfx no map data is posted (similarly in NWC files) but it is posted in 2d.

 

Use of Map3d for GIS information attached to civil3d entities is a great adition if you could only pass the information to models in 3d.

 

Custom workarounds in all cases need familiarity with VBa or .Net which not every user is ablle to achieve. I believe it would be better to modify and fix the currently lacking tools before creating new half baked tools with yet more lacking features. Sorry but that's my opinion.

 

Mike Evans

Civil3D 2022 English
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3820 CPU @ 3.60GHz (8 CPUs), ~4.0GHz With 32768MB RAM, AMD FirePro V4900, Dedicated Memory: 984 MB, Shared Memory: 814 MB

Message 15 of 38
Neilw_05
in reply to: MikeEvansUK

Even if some do not care about 3D pdf, others do. To help determine whether it is warranted I'd like to see it a part of the survey.
Neil Wilson (a.k.a. neilw)
AEC Collection/C3D 2024, LDT 2004, Power Civil v8i SS1
WIN 10 64 PRO

http://www.sec-landmgt.com
Message 16 of 38

1. Took survey (way too long)

2. Fix performance issues

3. Creates huge print spool files

Mike Porter
https://provostandpritchard.com/
Message 17 of 38
cadtech1986
in reply to: Neilw_05

This is especially important in meetings when having to project files, as a PDF viewer is more commonplace than, say, a dxf viewer. 

Message 18 of 38

I was actually just thinking about this last week. We don't need 3D PDFs but it'd be really nice to have a setting that keeps a running PDF version of the layouts in your SSM, so publishing wouldn't be such a daunting task (because of the crashes). I'm sure making that a not-so-resource-intensive task would be challenging but it'd be a great feature to have.

Message 19 of 38
Cadguru42
in reply to: micah.dickerson

It's clear that since Autodesk is killing Design Review that the DWF format is also going to die along with it and is probably the reason why they're asking so much about PDF. Sure, everyone has a PDF reader, but markups in Acrobat are horrible. I plot everything to a DWFx and then email or plot it. I'm probably going to have to switch to using PDF much more than I currently do. 

 

But as others have stated, the performance of PDF inside AutoCAD is horrible. The snapping is always a hit or miss if it's a vector PDF, but those are rare. Most of the plans I receive are from a scanned PDF so that signatures show up. Contrary to what Autodesk thinks, digital signatures aren't nearly as prevalent as they should be. 

C3D 2022-2024
Windows 10 Pro
32GB RAM
Message 20 of 38
TerryDotson
in reply to: Cadguru42

... the DWF format is also going to die ...

 

And if that happens it's there own fault for trying to totally control it.  They should have documented and published for format spec, provided freely accessable read and write drivers on multiple platforms and libraries in multiple languages to read and write them.  Openness leads to widespread use, control sufficates it.

 

PDF is badly lacking and is not better.  But because Adobe opened the format early, its the standard.

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