Output problem

[Ron Smith]

I can't get anything better than 72 dpi export from Autocad and several add-on programs for exporting .tif's. I need 300dpi or better with sharply defined lines and colors as I specify them in the CAD program. These are camouflage design sheets drawn over photos for which no official sheets exist.

I tried importing the .dwg and .dxf files into Corel Draw but as is typical of "art" programs it refuses to recognize layers and individual lines as discrete entities. It doesn't help that Corel's interface is overly cluttered and complex.

Plotting to inkjet, scanning as a .tif and opening that also does not work well since the process creates very small dots of color in all the color fields that are not correct and it gives the white paper color which I then have to remove.

[Werner]

AutoCAD will always export at 72dpi screen resolution. AutoCAD 2000 and 2000i do the same. Even high end programs from the same stable such as 3DS Max still only render to 72dpi and for some crazy reason everyone just accepts it. The work around is to not think of any dpi when other than 72dpi when in AutoCAD, Max etc & convert to 400dpi in Photoshop. Sometimes Photoshop doesn't like to convert up to 400dpi, especially with HP printers because HP printer fool the printer driver into thinking it has a lower resolution to speed up printing time - but that's another story! The command in Photoshop = Image Menu > Image Size... > Resolution (but uncheck the Resample Image first so you can't alter the image OD)

AutoCAD & Photoshop share a few different image formats (bmp, eps), but I don't think any of them retain line weights correctly and / or accurately. If it is a rendered image, you can also render to bmp, pcx, eps, tga & tif images from AutoCAD2000 (I'm not sure about R14).
Hope this helps.
D.L.

Design Community in 3D

[Ron Smith]

Been there, tried that, doesn't work. It also does not address the add-ons for Autocad which are *supposed* to be able to output 300dpi rasters. The recommendation they make of converting to a higher dpi in Photoshop (also can be done in Corel Photopaint) is useless, once you drop to 72 dpi and lose the clean diagonal lines and smooth circles os the vector image you'll never get them back. None of the export raster formats directly from Autocad are worth using and the "plot to file" trick to supposedly get Corel Draw to behave creates a flattened image with no layers and the "pen colors" are way whacked.

Of course if everybody could open .dwg or .dwf files this would be a moot point.

[Cadman]

I have had decent results exporting as EPS into Photoshop. In the newer versions of ACAD you can publish to web in jpg format. If the image is large enough, you can manually resize. The trick is to make the dwg 4-5 times larger than the desired image.

BTW a dwf plugin is readily available. So if it is for the web than that shouldn't stop you.

[Ron Smith]

I have had decent results exporting as EPS into Photoshop. In the newer versions of ACAD you can publish to web in jpg format. If the image is large enough, you can manually resize. The trick is to make the dwg 4-5 times larger than the desired image.

BTW a dwf plugin is readily available. So if it is for the web than that shouldn't stop you.

Thanks. I'm running 2000 and have tried both EPS, JPEG, BMP, WMF and various "plot to file" tricks, none yield results good enough. I get better results and much sharper/smoother lines by printing hardcopy and scanning back in as a .tif but then I run into problems with the colors having odd speckles. The purpose is design sheets for a photo CD meant to open with almost any browser, providing plugins could get problematic.

The drawing is done 1:1 which is a habit I got into a few years ago when working with body plans and trying to get them to scale properly. It also helps to be able to check the actual dimensions against the table of offsets and halfbreadths.

I'd really prefer importing to Corel Draw if it would behave like a real vector program instead of an artsy mess. It's bad enough I have to make sure to rescale the drawing so no dimension is over 150' or it chokes but the only way to make Autocad object separate entities is to put each one on its own layer in Autocad......somehow I really don't think over 5000 layers is a good idea.

[Ron Smith]

Acceptable quality but tedious solution found. Acme CAD Converter will output 300dpi .svg files and carry over solid hatching with the hatch boundaries....in fact it adds a few thousand more and basically subdivides the hatching. One bad thing is the hatched areas ar all black. The good thing other than sharp lines and smooth curves is you can take it into Corel Draw no problem and using he fill command replace the black hatched areas with real colors, so far so good.

[Guest]

Acceptable quality but tedious solution found. Acme CAD Converter will output 300dpi .svg files and carry over solid hatching with the hatch boundaries....in fact it adds a few thousand more and basically subdivides the hatching. One bad thing is the hatched areas ar all black. The good thing other than sharp lines and smooth curves is you can take it into Corel Draw no problem and using he fill command replace the black hatched areas with real colors, so far so good.

After much swearing I got a better solution. Convert the .dwg to .svg using the Acme program but make sure all the colors are from the 9 basic pen colors and you can use the default light grey and either black or white (do not use both black and white). Open the .svg with Corel Draw and set your page layout then export a 300 dpi .tif. Open in Photopaint or Photoshop, use "mask from color" and "replace color"....takes a bit of fiddling at the 1 and 2 pixel level on some lines to get really good results but it's better than trying to provide or point customers to appropriate plug-ins for their system later.