Re: ORCAD into Frame

["Dan S. Azlin" <dazlin -at- SHORE -dot- NET>]

On Wed, 1 Mar 1995, Joanna Sheldon wrote:

> Hi Folks -- I have another question.  I've got a bunch of application
> schematics to bring into a Frame document.  Frame doesn't like the
> ORCAD-produced dxf files, so I dragged them through Autosketch, after which
> Frame swallowed them happily.  Then I decided I wanted to thicken the lines
> (they were all hairline thickness), but noticed that the dashed lines had
> become solid.

> I called Autosketch and they said, sorry, in Autosketch no thick lines can
> be anything BUT solid.  Arggh!

> Does any of you know of a good solution to this problem?  Come to think of
> it, never mind, "good" --ANY solution will do.

Importing CAD files of any kind is a hit or miss operation.  The easiest
method that I have found is to export the CAD files as HPGL files,
thereby totally vectorizing them.  Then import the HPGL file into your
document or convert it to some other format.  The advantage here is that
the HPGL file will preserve ALL details of the drawing, including text
fonts (because they are no longer fonts, but vectors).

You may need to do some testing to find the right HPGL format; most CAD
packages have several HPGL drivers targeted to specific plotters.  Also,
be prepared for thin lines if the drawing was made for larger than an A
or B size.  This is because the CAD SW may rescale the line widths when
outputting to an A size plot file.

Of course you could always redraw everything in Corel or ....??

Good Luck.

Dan Azlin  ** Word Engineers, Technical Writing & Publishing **
dazlin -at- shore -dot- net                                ph/fax: 508-921-8908