Topic Title

Is there anyone who would know how to export a DataCAD file to a Jpeg. The
picture I am trying to get would exactly look like a print preview quality....Nice and crisp. B/W or Greyscale but nice good resolution

I have had a lot of luck doing a print preview and saving as a pdf file. After the pdf file is created I open with Adobe Photoshop and save it as a Jpeg. It works really well. If you don't have Photoshop there might be another software that converts pdf's to jpeg.

I found a good program online called the Universal Document Converter. You install it and select it from within DataCAD (or any other program) as if it were a printer driver. Instead of sending output to a printer, it allows you to select from a list of available image formats to save as.

Its also very useful for converting PDF files into an image format then inserting them into DataCAD.

I have had a lot of luck doing a print preview and saving as a pdf file. After the pdf file is created I open with Adobe Photoshop and save it as a Jpeg. It works really well. If you don't have Photoshop there might be another software that converts pdf's to jpeg.

the full version of Acrobat will "save-as" as well.

Be careful with what you wish for...

I wouldn't save any type of line drawing to jpg, it would be better to save as png, tif, or bmp. Because jpg does a type of averaging of colors for compression, the crisp, black lines will be averaged with additional grey points and will fuzz out. This averaging will cause the file size to become quite large. Jpg's should be used for photographic type images with a lot of colors and not much blank space. Universal Document Converter will create bmp, jpg, tif, gif, pcs, and dcx, but, may not be as crisp as you expect, but it works well. Photshop adds a grey line to the black and will not be crisp at magnification, but, it too works well.

The best (IMO) way is to get the free GSview (also known as Ghostgum) from the University of Wisconsin website at: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/gsview. Download and install both GSview and Ghostscript and install per instructions on the website.

You can then convert your pdf to a high resolution (you can choose 72, 300, or 600 dpi) png, or tiff. Png is better because of its smaller file size when dealing with images a few colors such as black & white or greyscale or "pure color" such as vector or clip art. Gif will produce the smallest file size but the quality may suffer.

The examples below are all derived from a 24" x 36" plot of a floor plan, saved as pdf in DataCAD 11, opened in GSview, and saved a png and a jpg. Irfanview was used to crop and copy. The final image composed in Lotus Freelance, saved as a bmp (1229kb), converted in Irfanview to a png (36kb) for posting. (The gif was made using Universal Document Converter.)

Note the file sizes gif = 91kb, pdf = 177kb, jpg = 3,112kb, and png = 351kb.

Iknow, I know...too much information, but, I hope it's helpful.

Great post Daniel!

I use JPG, exported at 300 or 600 dpi with no compression, but i will try PNG for my next project. After I open a JPG to make a brochure or 2D rendering from it I'll save it as a TIF or as AI, PDF what ever. I'm not too concerned about file size, just quality. I rarely have a black and white (grayscale) image without color.

Just a caution. Once you have saved as a jpg, you really can't save it as png (or any other format) and have it "clean" or be cleaned. The fuzzies are automatically created by the jpg compression algorithm. It's better to start with a bmp or tiff, then save copies as jpg, png, or whatever. And of course, never save a jpg as a jpg except lossless jpg.

When I shoot "good" digital photographs I set my camera for uncompressed tiff format rather than jpg, that way I can always create photos to send to clients etc. using jpg or png and still keep a pristine image to fall back on. Family photos are another story.

Another benefit of GSView is converting pdf to dxf for importing pdf into DataCAD. But, pdf's have different flavors. Some are bitmap based (from Photoshop), some are vector based (from DataCAD, Adobe Illustrator), others are a combination of bitmap and vector (some manufacturer's brochures). The bitmaps will not convert to dxf. the vectors will as well as embedded fonts. Drawn fonts like DataCAD's chr fonts will come in as polylines. But it's better than tracing.

Daniel,
Thanks for the great post