When the Engineering Department Says No
Jimmy Goldfarb, WORDS Director of Technical Illustration, is a founding member of In Other WORDS
How often does this happen to you? You want to illustrate a procedure or identify parts for a user manual. The engineering department has a drawing that, with some modifications, you would like to use. But before you can give the specifications of the output format you can work with, you get one of the following answers:
- The engineering department is too busy.
- The engineering department can't be bothered.
- Use a digital picture; maybe the user will be able to figure it out.
- Scan the A3–sized coffee–stained plot that has corrections scribbled in with a leaky ballpoint.
- Drop dead.
Sometimes, if you're persistent, you can squeeze an AutoCAD DWG file out of the engineering department. Of course, if you own AutoCAD and know how to use it, you can just open the file, make the changes, and export the file. However, for most non–draftspersons, buying such an expensive program just to use as a DXF filter is rather costly.
Both CorelDRAW and Visio can import AutoCAD files. Sometimes. You might be lucky.
DWG Import
Odds are, however, that you won't be lucky. In CorelDRAW, you choose File Import, select the DWG file, and this is what you get:
So you go to Visio 2000 and open the same file. You see the following dialog box:
You deselect Lock Position and Lock Cropping. The drawing opens up. Then you start to erase the title block and other elements that you don't need. You can't seem to select individual items, so you decide to ungroup the drawing first. You see the following dialog box:
Well, fair enough. You don't want to do error 928, whatever that is. So you decide to save the file to DXF, import it into CorelDRAW (where, you hope, error 928 doesn't exist) and make the changes there. Good plan, however. . . .
So how did you know you would need CAD drawing conversion functionality when you bought Visio 2000? Still, all is not lost. Maybe you can put the drawing on your clipboard and paste it in?
You go back to CorelDRAW, select Edit Paste Special, and see the following:
You weren't aware that it was an IntelliCAD drawing in the first place, but never mind. Picture (Enhanced Metafile) seems like a good option. You click OK.
Everything comes in. Problem solved. However, just to be on the safe side, you zoom in just to see if you have to adjust the line thickness. And this is what you see:
All of the lines have turned squiggly. You go back to Visio and zoom in on the same section.
Obviously something happened. You go back to CorelDRAW and change the line thickness:
Beautiful: a finer squiggly line.
At this point you might want to try to scan in the coffee–stained plot. However, all is not lost. Another format that CorelDRAW can accept is PLT, a plot file for a Hewlett–Packard plotter (also known as an HPGL file). If you can't save the Visio file as a format you can use, perhaps you can make it produce a PLT file.
First, install an HP plotter driver, many of which are available on your Windows installation CD–ROM.
Set the HP7580A plotter to create a file to disk. Go back to Visio, select your HP plotter, and print, giving your plot a name.
Return to CorelDRAW and import the PLT file. You will see the following dialog box.
Change the color of all of your pens to black and the pen width to the size you prefer—.35 mm is a one–point line. Then click OK. Just to be on the safe side you zoom in again:
Hard to believe, but it's even worse. But don't throw up your hands. Instead, go back to Visio, change the paper size to A0, enlarge the drawing, print a PLT to a file, and import again. Zoom in.
Hallelujah! Now that the drawing is in CorelDRAW, you can make changes and modifications and export it to the format you need for your user manual.
With some variations on the above dance steps, you should be able to get a usable drawing out of your engineering department. They say that it takes two to tango, but you can sometimes cut a beautiful figure by yourself on the dance floor.
Got a real graphics problem? Check with the experts at WORDS. We'll come up with a solution.
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