Expert: Bill DeShawn - 2/13/2004

Question
I am an architectural intern and saw your suggestion of using powerpoint for presentations.  What is the best way to get drawings from autocad to powerpoint and still have them look nice and all be the same scale in powerpoint?

Answer
Maria:  You have the same name as my wife.

Well first off, how would you verify something is to scale if it is projected on a screen at an unknown distance (like most presentations)?  

The best way to put an AutoCAD drawing objects into Power Point?...hmm...I can tell you how I do it and you can decide if my way is good enough.  I use the WMFOUT command to create a WMF (Windows Meta-file) image of selected autoCAD objects. I set the WMFBKGND to OFF or 0 if I want the background to be transparent.  Also, if I do that, I have better control of the size of the picture.  Then going to Word, I insert a picture in a Word document, and then I double click on the new image in Word and that puts me in the Edit Picture mode.  When that happens, there is a little button that looks like a pound sign (#) with an image inside of it.  Clicking on that will change the size of the image to the extents of the image.  If the AutoCAD background is in the WMF file, the size will not be controlable.  You can always change the background color of the presentation to simulate the AutoCAD background.  When you get it sized to fit the page the way you want to see it in a presentation (at least be able to see the important parts of the image), then while the image is still selected, you can press CTRL + C to copy the image to the clipboard.  Then in Power Point, you can press CTRL + V to paste the image into your presentation.  Scale will be relative and constant, as long as you use the corner grips to size your image.  In my opinion, it is impossible to make the image scale absolute except in cases where you practiced projecting the image and arrived at a proper distance from the screen that the projector needs to be.

Necessity is the mother of invention.
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Bill DeShawn
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