Lineweights being lost when copying drawing from AutoCAD LT to Word document

[Anonymous]

Hi there,

I am trying to copy a simple 2D line drawing from AutoCAD LT 2014 to Word 2013.  Unfortunately, whenever I do this lineweights are lost, which makes the Word version of the drawing look very thin, faint and hard to read.  I have followed the instructions on the AutoCAD help page, but it made no difference.

Details of my copy/paste process are as follows:

1. Set LWDISPLAY variable in AutoCAD to ON.
2. Highlight section of drawing to be copied and hit Ctrl+C.
3. Go to Word and select Paste Special -> Picture (Windows Metafile).  Alternatively, select Paste Special -> AutoCAD LT Drawing Object.  

End result:  Ugly, unusable drawing.  The only solution I have found is to thicken up the lines in Adobe Illustrator, but that's a very slow, cumbersome process.

If anyone has any suggestions I would be most appreciative.

Thanks,

Brendan. 

[Anonymous]

Mr. Horsfield.

I am a previous user of Autodesk products in Architectural and other environments and am re-purchasing AutoCAD LT for my laptop.  It seems as though you may have to turn your thinking inside-out for this problem.

If your Word document is a single-use item that you don't intend to make available electronically by outside individuals, but intend to produce hardcopy for distribution, I have an idea that might allow you to produce what you desire.

If you are comfortable in doing so, call me at 815-321-1827 (cell) and I will see if I can be of assistance.

Bill Kimble 

[Anonymous]

Hi Bill, 

Thanks for the quick reply to my post.  

Unfortunately my Word document is destined to be distributed electronically to a number of individuals, both inside & outside my organisation.  It is unlikely that anyone will ever want to print out a hard copy.

Regards,

Brendan.

[Anonymous]

Brendan,

Have you attempted to identify someone local to you that might offer
AutoCAD advice or training such as a reseller or educational institution
which offers drafting instruction? They might be able to help you maintain
the lineweights on insertion into your document.

As an alternative, have you tried to work any magic by utilizing the Excel
program?

Bill

[steven-g]

Do the lineweights show in Autocad ? It works just fine for me (the windows metafile option - does, but pasting as an drawing object - doesn't)

[pendean]

PLOT to a file format MSWord can import, then paste the image. That's the profssional publishing solution

[Anonymous]

Hi Dean,

Thanks for your suggestion.  I tried plotting my drawing to a PDF file, and the results were great -- all linewidths were preserved, and the graphics were vectorised.  Unfortunately, when I imported the PDF file into Word, all I got was a poor quality, low-resolution version of the image.

I then tried to plot to a WMF file, but this does not appear to be an option in AutoCAD LT 2014.

Finally, I tried exporting my drawing to WMF file.  Unfortunately the resulting WMF file was extremely low-resolution and completely unusable.

Is there some kind of plug-in that I am missing, or a third-party driver I can purchase?

Regards,

Brendan.

[Anonymous]

Hi Steven,

I can export to WMF, but the lineweights are lost in the process.  

Also, the file appears to have been rasterised -- i.e. it does not contain vector graphics.  I could probably live with this, but only if the lineweights from the original drawing are preserved.

Regards,

Brendan.

[steven-g]

Autocad has a command "wmfout" and the resulting wmf can be brought into MSWord directly, but I have re-tested and all the paste special functions within MSWord paste the drawings correctly showing lineweights

[pendean · Accepted solution]

So plot to an actual Raster File like PJG, PNG, or BMP, with lineweights, or even EPS or PS file types: PLOTTERMANAGER command to set these drivers up.

Just remember Raster files are not scalable (aka rasterised): you can't create an image, then zoom in and expect the quality to hold. That only happens in the movies.

BTW "raster" files like JPG, PNG and "raterised" go hand in hand.

[Anonymous]

Hi Gents,

I think I'm getting close now!  

Plotting to a PNG file using the "Publish To Web PNG.pc3" plotter gives pretty good results -- certainly good enough for an electronic document.

Plotting to PDF from AutoCAD LT and then converting to PNG using Adobe Illustrator works even better.

So now I've got two solutions to choose from.

I will mark this query as "solved".  Thanks very much for all your help -- it really got me out of a hole.

Regards,

Brendan.

[Anonymous]

Hey all,

I am currently having the same issue!!

Would someone be able to tell me why when I export my CAD drawing to a ".wmf" file type it doesn't show in my file explorer?

[pendean]

>>>...why when... ".wmf" file type it doesn't show in my file explorer?...<<<
You may have file extensions hidden.
You may be looking in the wrong folder.
You never actually exported anything.