AutoCAD and PDF

[awa5114]

I have drawings of buildings in AutoCAD that I would like to scale and overlay on top of raster PDF As-Built plans. I have access to Bluebeam Revu which does not support this feature, so I am looking for other means.

I have also tried to go the other way, i.e import the pdfs into AutoCAD and produce an overlay. Though this may somewhat work, there are two main disadvantages:

1) XREFing multiple PDFs into AutoCAD slows down the dwg so as to render it unuseable.
2) You lose the viewing flexibility allowed by PDF software such as Bluebeam or Adobe (Bookmarking, jumping from one view to the next, etc)

I have also looked into dxf and non dwg/pdf file formats but without significant depth. These may show promise but I thought I would throw it out here first.

Has anyone encountered a similar problem?

 

[Sparweb]

Have you tried to convert the PDF raster into a monochrome TIFF or GIF?
The IMAGE insertion allows more graphic controls, and the mono raster will consume less memory.

STF

 

[dik]

If the *.pdf was created directly from a cad program (often the case) then there are programs, I use Pdf2Cad that create a cad file. If the pdf file was created directly from a cad file, even the layer names are maintained. Scale the converted cad file to match dimensions and use unit command as req'd.

Make a block of it and then you have an overlay that you can place anywhere on your drawing.

Dik

 

[chicopee]

Use CutePDF to convert ACAD to PDF. Once the files are in PDF, you can not modify them, however,you also still have retained your original ACAD file.

 

[wannabeSE]

Since you have BlueBeam have you tries the following
1. Plot the dwg to a pdf using BlueBeam as the printer
2. Use BlueBeam to take a snapshot of the area of interest in the pdf (snapshot is in BlueBeam's edit tab)
3. Paste the snapshot into the as-built pdf
4 Scale the snapshot as required with BlueBeam's properties (EG if the new plot is 1/4"-1' and the as built is 1/8"-1', scale the scale to 50%)
5. If you want to change the color of the snapshot for clarity, use "Change Color" with BlueBeam's properties.

Note, the snapshot tool doesn't work very well on scanned files because the snapshot background is white instead of transparent.