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Tracing over a bitmap how do I dial down the opacity so I

PostPosted: Fri Apr 07, 2017 11:06 am
by George W. Burns CPBD
can see what I am doing? I am drawing a site plan of an existing building, I have a hand-drawn survey from 30 years ago in PDF form. I tried to open it in Photoshop and invert the image, delete all the black, delete the background layer, and then save as a bitmap (bmp, because apparently psd are not supported), but it still came in on a white background, so I can't see my cyan lines easily... if at all. Surely there is a way to dial down the opacity inside of DataCad????
George

Re: Tracing over a bitmap how do I dial down the opacity so

PostPosted: Fri Apr 07, 2017 12:18 pm
by David Porter
I think you have to adjust the transparency of the image before bringing it into DCAD as a jpg image. I typically take an image (if it was originally a PDF, I use PhotoShop Elements to convert it to a jpg) and then adjust the transparency in an editing program and then import that into DCAD to make the DCAD lines more noticeable on the screen.

Re: Tracing over a bitmap how do I dial down the opacity so

PostPosted: Fri Apr 07, 2017 5:18 pm
by Mark Bell
Also, place the image on a layer that is further up on your layer list, then draw on a layer that is further down the list so it draws over the image. Pressing U (Update) on your keyboard will update the display list to refresh the image and linework. I'm not aware of any way to change the transparency of images inside DataCAD so this would need doing to the image prior to importing it.

Re: Tracing over a bitmap how do I dial down the opacity so

PostPosted: Fri Apr 07, 2017 6:02 pm
by joshhuggins
Little more info on the topic, Datacad does not support any type of image file transparency in Datacad itself. You will have to draw on top of the image using Mr. Bell's suggestions.

Datacad Materials can have images with alpha channel transparency image textures that will render transparent in SunShader and O2C with different results. I don't recall what they are off the top of my heard right now, you would have to play with each if you need that.