PADS schematic into Word doc

Cheers

In FrameMaker, you adjust zoom and drag the embedded object to pan to the section of interest. Then, lay callouts, etc. onto the "frame".

You can, for example, embed a photo of an object *in* a frame, scaled however you'd like. Then, create another frame within this frame overlapping the photo and embed the same file at a different magnification/zoom level -- to illustrate a "close up" of some portion of the image that appears "beneath" (behind) it. Then, days/minutes later, change the sizes/scales of each of these frames to reflect changing ideas as to the visual impact of the result.

Instead of having to flit back-and-forth between applications.

Can PADS export to HPGL (old HP plotter format)? If so, Word has an old import filter for that, which has been switched off "for security" some years ago, but can still be re-enabled in the registry.

Dimitrij

Is that a screen capture? That's what I'm doing now, and it doesn't look very good.

I can print very nice PDF files, using CutePDF as a system printer. The problem is getting the PDF into Word. I guess I should buy some Windows add-on that lets me print as a TIFF or something that Word accepts.

My major customers are Word and Excel (yuk!) users.

Thanks, but this is a recurring problem. I need a simple, fast drag-and-drop path.

A screen capture should look *exactly* like the image you have on the screen. If not, it is because of what you are doing with it after the capture. JPG is not a good format for images containing text or lines. You can use an appropriate format such as PNG or BMP and you will end up with what you have captured with no loss of quality.

Drag-and-drop? Usually, when I'm creating a report/design-review I want to crop and/or erase portions of a schematic to make the descriptions more easy to follow.

Since you can print "very nice PDF files" why don't you invest in some cheap (vector) graphic editor (I like Paint Shop Pro) which will allow you to change PDF to a format that works well with Word (like EMF)?

Then you can apply irregularly-shaped cropping or erase portions (or proprietary info), and SCALE to fit as you like in Word. ...Jim Thompson

Screen capture has already digitized (rasterized) the image. I.e., you'll never get any *better* quality (nor "precision") than what you see. Scaling up from there will either result in "The Jaggies" (TM Reg) *or* a disappointing attempt at an antialiased image.

There can be somewhat acceptable results if you scale *down* (depending on what you are looking at).

Note that PDF's (re)sample their imported content so you can get a variety of interactions.

And, PDF's are only *container* formats; you can embed a TIFF, BMP, EPS, etc. "image" in a PDF and the user is none the wiser (indeed, you can even embed one "behind" the other as is commonly the case with OCR'd text "hiding" behind a TIFF image of a text page)

You also have to be wary of how your document will eventually be *used*. E.g., rendering it to paper vs. viewing electronically. In the former case, the scaling that will be applied to the content AFTER you've released the document is pretty well constrained; A-size pages printed on A size paper (i.e., not scaled to fit E-size paper!)

But, when distributed in electronic form (and viewed electronically), there is a greater chance that the content will be viewed at a higher level of magnification. So, letting the images be sampled at ~100dpi may turn out to produce crappy/jaggy images for those users who opt to view it "larger than 1:1".

Spend an afternoon playing with various settings in your PDF writer, illustrator, etc. and examine the resulting "documents" at different levels of zoom, different viewing software, etc. so you understand the consequences of your document preparation strategy.

OK, what works best so far is

Open the schematic in PADS

Export a sheet as a PDF. PADS can do this itself, or CutePDF or Foxit can do it as a Windows printer. The native PADS output looks best.

Download and install GIMP for Windows. After installation, google to find out how to actually start it and create a desktop icon, which it announced it would do but didn't. Create the icon.

Drag the schematic PDF onto the GIMP icon and open file/save_as. The available formats are all weird. Select the GIMP HELP, and get an error message that HELP is not available. Google the question and find that the thing to do isn't save_as, but export. Fiddle with export a bit and actually create a tiff file.

Drag the tiff file into the Word doc and tweak size and rotation.

It works! and looks about as good as printing and rescanning, but saves paper.

If it looks good on-screen in PADS, then a screen capture should preserve this exactly; all the ones I have used produce a PNG which is a bitwise-exact copy. I have never seen a JPEG one which (would generally be lousy for screenshots).

PDFreator will print to a dozen or so formats including PNG and TIFF so may be what you are looking for. You can set it to silently dump it's autonamed output file in a folder somewhere, you can then just drag and drop the PNG into your document I imagine.

Its a wrapper around ghostscript I believe and I find it very useful in windows-land. Beware it went through a malware stage, I use v 1.2.3 from before the shenanigans which has been fine for many years. I think they have cleaned up their act since but always install that one and disable updates.

Irfanview is better. It needs the PDF.DLL plugin to read the PDF file, but then it does all its usual good stuff and can save a nice TIFF.

Gimp, like a lot of Linux-originated software, doesn't immediately make sense.

Have you seen Photoshop?? :>

near the start of this thread he said he didn't want pixels. PNG is less than ideal if the final target is paper

you're better off with a vector format like SVG, or EPS

It should be possible to extract an EPS from a PDF using inkscape

Print? What for? Use a screen capture program. I use ParaBen Screen Capture, which also allows re-sizing, added notes, etc. The captured image can also be saved in BMP, GIF, TIFF, PNG and other formats.

It's easy. Just plop the PDF.DLL file into the folder where the binary lives. Irfan is great; I send him a small donation every year, and he sends me a thank-you note.

I've tried Libre, but it seems to do weird things to Word docs. And I get tired of learning new user interfaces.

The eraser doesn't erase, it paints grey zebra stripes. I suppose gimp is too sophisticated for my tiny brain.

I design electronics; I don't want to drown in the whirlpool of software installs and VMs and macros and all that.

Windows does screen capture; hit the PrintScreen key. But the resolution is terrible.

I have a Dell that came with Win7 and Office. It just works. Word is fine if you turn off most options and don't use styles or macros or auto-anything.

I like the rare good advice. Doing complicated computer stuff doesn't appeal to me.

I believe he said he couldn't get a good image by doing a screen capture and using JPG. I don't think he understands what happens with JPG images. JPG is not designed to deal with fonts, lines or other sharp contrasts.

Not relevant to your pdf->word problem. But when I put images in word these days I always put them in a table. (maybe only on cell... or two to hold the caption.) That way the image stays where I put it.

George H.