Adding PDF Data (10:11 min)

Adding PDF Data – Practice Exercise

Task 1: Attach the PDF

  1. Continue to build the Base Map drawing. Open the practice file, Base Map.dwg. It should be up to date with the data added from completing the previous exercise.
  2. Use the XREF command to open the XREF panel.
  3. Select the attach icon and pick Attach PDF.

 

  1. Browse to the PDF folder in the dataset and select “Drone Survey Limits with Control Points”
  2. Place a check mark next to Specify on Screen for the Insertion Point.

 

  1. Select OK and place the PDF to the side of the points.
  2. Close the XREF panel.

 

Task 2: Change the Display Background to View PDF

  1. Zoom the display to see both the PDF and the control points. 
  2. Temporarily change the drawing background color so that the PDF appears better. Right click anywhere in the drawing canvas and select Options at the bottom of the pop-up menu.
  3. On the Options dialog select the Display tab and go to Colors.

 

 

 

  1.  In the interface element list select Uniform Background at the top of the list and select white.

 

  1. Also check that the crosshairs element is set to Black or another contrasting color.
  2. Select Apply and Close to dismiss,
  3. Select OK to close the Options dialog.
  4. Notice that the PDF is easier to see.

 

 

 

 

Task 3: Set Up Two Viewports

  1. On the View tab on the ribbon select Viewport configuration, in the drop down select Two Vertical.

 

 

  1. Zoom and Pan one of the viewports to show the details in the PDF and the other to show the area around the GPS control points at the lower right of all the points – around points CP 6, 7, and 8.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Task 4: Draw the Basis of Bearing Line

  1. The goal is to draw the Basis of Bearing line from GPS CP8 using the exact bearing and distance as shown on the PDF. This is how we will match and co-relate the PDF to the real world geographic coordinates and scale the PDF.
  2. Set the Endpoint and Node Osnaps to on.  
  3. Begin the LINE command
  4. Start the line at the Node osnap of GPS CP8. 
  5. Go to the transparent command toolbar and select the icon for Bearing Distance. Note if you do not have the transparent command toolbar ready then you can type the transparent command at the command line by entering ‘BD.

 

 

  1. At the command line you must enter the quadrant – the bearing in the north east direction is quadrant one – so enter 1.
  2. Enter the bearing. The bearing is entered as the degree followed by a decimal point and then the minutes and seconds.  Note: this looks like a decimal degree entry – but in this case it is how it understands degrees, minutes, and seconds. Type in: 21.490252 and hit enter.
  3. Enter the distance at the command line. Type in: 424.986 and hit enter.
  4. Hit enter one more time to finish the line command.

 

Task 5: Adding the Bearing and Distance Label

 

  1. On the Annotate tab select Add Labels.
  2. Click on Add Single Segment Line/Curve Label.

 

 

  1. Pick near the midpoint of the line to place the label.
  2. Zoom in on both view ports so that you can validate that the bearing and distances match.

 

 

 

 

 

  1. Before using the align command to match our PDF to the drawing we must make certain that the line is not sloped.  Use the Properties panel to check the start and end Z values of the line. If you see that the line is indeed sloped then change both Z values to 0 so that the line has no slope.

 

 

 

Task 6: Align the PDF to the Drawing

 

  1. Before we match the PDF let’s make sure that the PDF Osnap is enabled – to do this select the PDF and in the context sensitive ribbon see that the PDF Enable Snap Icon is highlighted.

 

  1. Begin the ALIGN command
  2. Select the PDF by clicking anywhere on the edge.
  3.  Watch the command line prompts, pick the first source point – carefully finding the endpoint of the basis of bearing line in the PDF and using the endpoint PDF osnap. You may have to zoom in to get the correct endpoint location.
  4. Once the first source point is selected go to the other viewport and click once to activate it and zoom in and select the endpoint of the bearing line. You must make certain to use the Endpoint osnap.
  5. Return to the PDF viewport and click to activate it and again zoom into select the endpoint at the top of the bearing line as the second source point.
  6. Go to the other viewport and click to activate it and zoom to the top of that line and make certain to use the endpoint osnap – if you use the Node osnap the alignment results will be very distorted, because the node will give you different z values.
  7. You do not need a third source point so at the command line hit enter to end the matching.
  8. Answer Yes to Scale objects based on alignment points.
  9. The PDF moves to align, scale and rotate to match the basis of bearing data.
  10. On the view tab return to a single viewport configuration.
  11. Zoom out to see the extents of the PDF, select on the edge and right click and select Send to Back to set the Display order.
  12. Zooming in on some of the control points gives us more validation that the PDF data has been properly co-related to the base map geographic location.

 

 

 

Task 7: Extract Vectors from the PDF

 

 

  1. Select on the PDF to give the context sensitive PDF ribbon and select the Import as Objects icon.
  2. At the command line specify the area to import, we can also right click and select ALL from the pop-up menu.
  3. Select Unload. This will completely remove any reference to the PDF in the Base Map drawing.
  4. An important note: Not all PDF files will be able to produce vector input to our CAD drawing, it depends on how the PDF was originally published. You can visit the Autodesk Knowledge Network to learn more about the differences.

Task 8: Convert PDF Text to Mtext

 

  1. The text resulting from the PDF import has been interpreted as polylines. The PDFSHXTEXT command is used to convert these polylines actual MTEXT entities. 
  2. Begin the PDFSHXTEXT command
  3. Use the settings option to toggle on the most similar text fonts to those that the polylines resemble.



  1. Select the polylines to convert and check the results reported in the alert box to see if it worked.

 

 

  1. Select the resulting items and see that they are now MTEXT entities. Try the command again with a different group of entities and see the conversion.

 

 

Task 9: Clean-Up Using Lineworkshrinkwrap

 

  1. Sometimes we must clean-up entities that are converted from the PDF.  In this case the polyline representing the limits polygon has been interpreted as a set of multiple polylines because the width of the polyline that was converted.  The easiest way to create a closed polygon from these polylines is to use the LINEWORKSHRINKWRAP command. And select the polylines that make up the limits. Instantly a closed polyline will be created. Make note of where the polyline is created in case you might need to adjust it to conform to the centerline and not the outside edges.

 

 

 

  1. Save the Base Map drawing.
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