Import a PDF (Probably from Revit) but NOT Import Hatches

[Anonymous]

HI All,

I have a lot of PDFs that were probably generated by Revit but they're loaded with individual lines that were probably a hatch in their previous life. So as any good CAD operator, I'm trying to reuse these but there are SO MANY lines, its taking me a long time to erase them.

Is there an easy way to erase all the lines that were originally hatches?

TIA for any suggestions and/or help.

Sal

I'm using AutoCAD 2020

[pendean]

Nope, unless they have a unique property your can sort with QSELECT or SELECTSIMILAR or FILTER commands.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Pendean,

That's what I thought but I was hoping this highly esteemed forum would have something up its sleeve. Oh well, it was necessary for me to ask.

Sal

[vinodkl]

Hi,

Have you checked the pdf import settings while importing? There is an option to exclude the solid fills. If the element is really a hatch or solid fill in the PDF then it would not be imported🙂

[Anonymous]

Hi vinodkl,

Thanks for your reply. I did that, and always do for PDF imports, but the problem exists.

I mentioned in the OP that I suspect these PDFs came from Revit because I'm not sure if in the original, it a hatch, solid fill or just a material assignment. If the latter, this MAY be the problem as all the "material" is translated to "individual" lines. Yeah, A LOT of individual lines that in many cases to not respect the boundaries and just run amuck across my desired objects. Many hours wasted erasing all these lines.

Thanks again for your suggestion.

Sal

[Anonymous]

Okay, just an update.

         5 - number of PDFs

      7-9 - number of elevations on each PDF

900KB - size reduction after manually erasing the "hatch" lines

4+ hours of time I'll never get back

[vinodkl]

Hi,

Maybe it's not a Hatch or solid I guess. It could be something else. If not when importing the hatches wouldn't have been imported in the drawing🙂

[vinodkl]

Hi,

Just want to know how you are filtering these lines? Which method do you use? Because four hours seems to be more.

Since I have not seen the PDF and not sure of the complexity of the PDF, I could be wrong as well.

[maratovich]

Add an example of your file.

[Anonymous]

Hi Maratovich,

Thanks for your interest. I have attached one of the PDFs and one DWG of the same after I stripped out the "hatch."

Let me know your thoughts after you've had a chance to examine.

Sal

[vinodkl · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Here is how I would get the hatches/lines off the drawing using QSELECT and remove the remaining manually within few minutes🙂

When you import a PDF there will be multiple properties of the elements using which you can filter them, like color, lineweight, length of polyline and so on...

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Master vinodkl,

I ultimately want all this graphic on layer "1" so I set the import to "Current Layer" which I now see was a mistake. Once the import was done, I selected all and changed everything to color BYLAYER and linetype CONTINUOUS. Another mistake on my part. While I thought I was being smart, I was actually crippling myself.

I will know better next time thanks to your help.

Sal