"Export" Schematic Page from a .PDF File Service Manual

You can't extract pages with the free reader. You need the full Adobe Acrobat software (expensive) package to do that. And if the author of the PDF file secured the PDF package, even the full Acrobat package won't allow you to extract pages unless you know the password to the file.

I use a printer driver called "Acrobat Generic Color PS" to print to FILE and then I manipulate the postscript output using Ghostscript, save to whatever format I desire and then edit in an image processing or paint program.

Regards,

Michael

As it turns out, I faced this problem just yesterday. (I have the free Adobe Reader 7.0.)

I wanted to print a schematic that occupied a third of a page. As Dave writes, you can't capture a page, but you can capture an image or part of one.

Anyway, when I printed the whole page, the piece I wanted looked awful. I expanded the page so that the desired schematic filled the screen, and then captured it, pasted it into a graphics program, and printed it - and it still looked terrible. But when I expanded the page (in Acrobat) as far as I could, then captured the desired schematic, then pasted it into a graphics program and resized it and printed it, it was much better.

To capture, use the little button with the picture of the camera on it. It lets you draw a selection box around whatever you want to capture, even if it is bigger than the screen, and then pastes the contents of the selection box into the Clipboard. From there, you paste into your graphics program ...

Bill

I hate the Acrobat software. I always find it very unfriendly to use, if you want to do anything other than really bog standard functions. I now use a full registered version that came with this computer when I bought it off a friend who was closing down, and it is relatively straightforward to print off pages from a service manual ( after you've spent about a half hour staring at the screen whilst the stupid program initialises itself ), but prior to this, I too used a standard 'free' version, and I know that I found ways to print only the pages that you wanted, including zoomed views, and it was also possible to print schematics 'tiled' across a number of sheets. Don't ask me how I did it though. I recall that every time, I would sit and puzzle over it until I was about six menu levels deep, and finally found it again ...

The one good thing about a pdf file that it has over a bitmap, is that it can be zoomed to a level enough to read component values, whilst not being too many megs. A bitmap has to have a really good resolution in the first place to allow high level zooming, and that tends to make it big.

Oh for the days when you phoned a manufacturer, and they sent you a nice paper service manual, FOC, that had proper fold-out schematics, a block diagram, and even a description of how their half-arsed circuitry worked !

Arfa

I should also mention that some PDFs display better than they print (depends on options when they were created); if the visual looks good, I capture it (or zoomed segments of it) using 'PRINT SCREEN' (in Windows) to the clipboard and save the BMP for processing. It is easy to reassemble the captured segments into a large bitmap for big pages.

Regards,

Michael

Indeed, I had forgot to mention that in my reply about screen captures although I wonder what version of the reader first included the camera.

Regards,

Michael

O.T. -- did you get my last few emails regarding the SIP UA? Please try again using X-lite. Nobody has called in to hear the audio yet and I've had 162 unique IP hits so far.

Regards,

Michael

On Sat, 16 Jun 2007 14:22:18 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@verizon.net (Brad) put finger to keyboard and composed:

Zoom in to the desired part of the schematic and then select the Current View radio button in the Print window. I'm using Acrobat Reader version 6.0.

BTW, you can dramatically reduce the startup time of Acrobat Reader by disabling unnecessary plugins:

- Franc Zabkar

It REALLY bugs me when people make the statement you did (when it is obviously just limp hyperbole). Had you done EVERYTHING, you would already have what you need

--or would have proven the task to be impossible.

Linux

Windoze

Magnify the area you want, depress the Print screen button (PTR SCR). this places a Bmp on the clipboard., open up a paint program and use the paste function. then you can trim off what you don't want, and print the rest.

OT - Bear with me Michael. Bit busy at the moment. Will try this week.

Arfa

Try with the foxit pdf reader.

Can you get all of what you want to see on your screen clearly at a decent resolution ?

If so then press 'print screen', open a graphics editor like Irfanview (free) and go edit, paste.

You can then save what you wanted in whatever graphics format you like.

Graham

Have you been able to get what you need from the PDF file yet? If not, I have the latest version of the full Acrobat package, so if the PDF isn't protected, I might be able to help you. How big is the PDF file? If it isn't too big to attach to an email, you could send to me and I'll do what I can to help. I should be able to extract the image that you're trying to get, then send that back to you. If it's a really big PDF file, then maybe you could post it on a web site somewhere so I can download it.

Cheers!!! ==============

Dave M

masondg44 at comcast dot net Never take a laxative and a sleeping pill at the same time!!

Hi,

Thanks to everyone for your replies. To the one who didn't like my "I tried everything" statement, please note: "I could think of" is implied. We all say things that are not to be taken literally.

I know about the button that allows you to outline an area which you can Copy (Ctrl & C), then Paste (Ctrl & V) into another ap like "Paint".

What I would have liked is to export the schematic page in it's original format when it was "imported" into the .PDF document. Originally, I assume, the schematic was scanned. Afterwards, that image was "imported" into the .PDF document (being created).

Brad

No matter what format and resolution of the original, building the PDF involves scaling and converting the image; if the author chooses to retain the original resolution that will be available, but the original format will not.

Regards,

Michael

On Sun, 17 Jun 2007 19:46:05 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@verizon.net (Brad) put finger to keyboard and composed:

Do you want to export the .pdf file or just print an enlarged portion of it? If the latter, then my previous suggestion will do exactly what you want.

As for your assumption that schematics are scanned, that may be the case for paper originals, but I expect that many, if not most, schematics are created in PDF format, or at least converted losslessly from some other format. You can test this by searching for text within the schematic. If the document has been scanned, then you will find nothing. Another way is to zoom in and see whether the image retains its clarity or becomes pixellated.

- Franc Zabkar

Hey Franc - thanks for that ! Certainly did the trick. Acrobat starts up in about a quarter the time now. Heartily recommended to anyone who finds themselves using the prog regularly ...

Arfa