Expert: Bill DeShawn - 6/3/2004

Question
The best thing I've found so far is to use copylink from AutoCAD or from within Office (word or Exel) insert object and insert an AutoCAD drawing.  This creates basicly a view of your drawing (you can select objects to copy)that you can still edit.  The only thing is you need to create a layerstate that represents your output colours etc.
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Followup To
Question -
Thanks for the tip.  I've tried this in the past, the only problem is with detailed drawings (lots of text) your restricted to your display resolution for the output quality.  I wish there was a better way.
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Followup To
Question -
Is there a way to extract (export, save as, print to another program etc.) .dwg files to a viewable image file e.g. jpg or tiff?  I've tried just about everything I can think of including plotting to pdf and "snapshoting" the image and pasting it into Photoshop.  this keeps coming up again and again and I'd like to find a way that has a good result.

If you have any ideas that would be great.

Thanks,

Jeremy
Answer -
Have you tried this method?  Press ALT+ PrintScreen when you are in AutoCAD, and then paste in WORD, Windows Paint, PhotoShop or wherever.  You will paste exactly what you were seeing in the Window that was current.  That, of course, would include the menu, command line and toolbars.  It looks a little freaky, 'cause you think you are in AutoCAD, but you're really in another program.

You can paste into Windows paint, and crop of the parts you don't want, and save it as JPG or BMP.  You can save to GIF, but Windows Paint will change the colors slightly if you do.

Keep in touch
Bill DeShawn
http://my.sterling.net/~bdeshawn

Answer -
Have you tried exporting to a Windows Meta-file and importin that into Word?  Use WMFOUT to create the file.
Also, use WMFBKGND to control the background of the WMF file.

Keep in touch
Bill DeShawn
http://my.sterling.net/~bdeshawn


Answer
Before, you said "viewable".  Now are you wanting "editable"?  If that's the case, copylink sounds like a good idea.  But if "viewable" works, then try WMFOUT like I said last time.  You didn't say whether you tried that or if you did what your results were.  Give it a shot.  The text ends up being chopped up polylines if you re-import the WMF, so get your VIEWRES set high for best quality, especially for curves like circles and splines.

Keep in touch
Bill DeShawn
http://my.sterling.net/~bdeshawn