Topic Title

Is there a way for us to extract information from a pdf file and put it into a datacad drawing?
I have recieved a door hardware schedule from a local manufacturer and want to insert it into my drawing. The manufacturer is not able to extract the information from his program other than as a pdf file.
The job does not require a full blown specification in A4 photocopy format, so all our specification information is included in the drawings.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Regards

Robert Penn

Hello Robert & welcome!

You could do this with Adobe Acrobat, or you could do it with the software that Mark Toce links to in this thread. Either way makes an image file (I'd recommend PNG) which you can then insert into DataCAD. If you need to have vector (line) info in DataCAD, then the best thing to do would be to scale the PNG to the correct size (in DataCAD) and then "trace" it.

[quote="ROBERT PENN"]Is there a way for us to extract information from a pdf file and put it into a datacad drawing?

You can use that fine product made right here in God'sown, Ghostgum.
I had e real bad time with some AutoCad files. I used Volo to plot relevant layers to PDF and and then used Ghostgum to produce DXF.
The limitations are obvious, and stand by for a lot of bloat, but at least it's free.

Hello:

I just found out that Adobe Reader 7 does several things that could be what you want: you can do a snapshot box around an image, and this gets clipped and puts it on the Windows clipboard. Open a photo editor (like the free IrfanView), and hit Control-V to paste it in, resize as required, Save As a PNG, insert it into DataCAD 11!

There is also a easy way to export any and all of the image files that may be embedded in the PDF -- again, this is possible in the v7 Reader. Look for the 'Picture Tasks' button.

Acrobat Reader since I can remember has had the clip graphic tool, which is sometime hidden under the text select tool. These are on the toolbar. If you don't see it then select windows, toolbars, basic tools.

However, I agree w/ Nick - Ghostgum or GSview, whichever you prefer to call it, is a better tool to use.
Free at http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/gsview/

Thank you Neil (x2), Nick and Daniel. I will look at all your options to see which one will suit best. It's great to be able to have such a fantastic group of people around to help out.
thanks once again