Re: Importing AutoCAD drawings into Word 97

Subject: Re: Importing AutoCAD drawings into Word 97
From: Tim Altom <taltom -at- SIMPLYWRITTEN -dot- COM>
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1998 10:11:49 -0500

Ed, I'm a little puzzled. Word's picture format IS a WMF, or Windows
MetaFile. If you want proof, save as an RTF and open that file in a
programming editor. You'll find your graphics files listed there as WMFs.

It makes little difference to Word whether you paste or paste special to
insert a WMF from the clipboard. The first insertion into Word should be as
far as you need to go. What's the storage difference between *that* initial
insertion and your later, second insertion?

In point of fact, you can't even use paste special as an OLE feature from
the clipboard. How are you realizing any significant memory efficiency? Is
it possible that the WMF export from AutoCad is bloated? WMFs aren't
typically all that big.

For even greater efficiency, you could theoretically use paste special to
insert an object, rather than a whole graphic. In other packages I'd
recommend such "insertion by reference," but Word has a bad habit of losing
its links.

Oh, and as to your files "growing" on you, check to see if you've enabled
fast saves. Although fast saves are quicker, they pump up the document
because you're not allowing Word time to push out the extraneous junk.

Tim Altom
Adobe Certified Expert, Acrobat
Simply Written, Inc.
317.899.5882
http://www.simplywritten.com
Creators of the Clustar Method for task-based documentation


>For Word 97, our best solution for importing AutoCAD images was to:
>
>*Export from CAD to a .WMF format
>*Import that .WMF document to Word 97
>*Cut the .WMF and "paste special" as a picture. (Make sure you uncheck
>"float over image" and that the picture is embedded.)
>
>The final product takes little memory, doesn't take a lot of resources to
>redraw (like a .WMF), and stops Word 97 from bloating. With plain .WMF
>files, our Word 97 files grew from 4 to 12 meg after several hours of use
>because metafiles need more resources to redraw in Word. Word does this
with
>non-native images. By making them into Microsoft's "picture" format, we
>could include dozens of AutoCAD images and remain at a stable 1 to 2 megs
>for a 150 page document.
>

From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000=




Previous by Author: Re: Bitmap to .wmf conversion
Next by Author: Re: CGM format
Previous by Thread: Re: Importing AutoCAD drawings into Word 97
Next by Thread: Re: Importing AutoCAD drawings into Word 97


What this post helpful? Share it with friends and colleagues:


Sponsored Ads