Plot window to jpg or png

Tom Øygarden
Tom Øygarden
in BricsCAD BIM

Hello Bricscad community!

I've been trying out the software for some hours and must say I'm impressed. In my job as a surveyor I use AutoCad a lot, but only a very limited amount of the features. Therefore I set out looking fore something more lightweight and less expensive. With the GeoTools addon I've found all the features we use at the office, except one.

I'd like to know if there's a way to plot a window of the model to a png or jpg. AutoCad has built-in plotters called PublishToWeb JPG and PNG.

When I try to plot from Bricscad I only see "Fax" and ""Microsoft XPS Document Writer".

Any tips here? It would be very nice if there's a solution to this.

 

Regards,

Tom Øygarden, Nerdrums Opmaaling AS, Oslo, Norway

Comments

  • Rakesh Rao
    Rakesh Rao

     

    Hi Tom,

    We are the developers of GeoTools software for Bricscad (and AutoCAD) and thank you for the compliments.

    Please do let me know if you need anything else in GeoTools that you did not find. We would be glad to try and add them in for you.

    About your plot question, I am sure you have seen it but there is an option to export the DWG to BMP or WMF, from which you can convert to JPG or PNG. I am not sure if there is a direct way to output PNG/JPG. Perhaps, Bricsys support may answer this for you.

    Regards
    Rakesh Rao
    http://rakeshrao.typepad.com

     

  • Ferdinand Janssens
    Ferdinand Janssens

    Hi Tom,

    Many of our user use so-called virtual printers which instead of sending their output directly to a physical printer generate a file. This method is used extensively to generate PDF output. Please note that while Bricscad allows to 'export' a complete .dwg to pdf format what I'm talking about here is really printing (rather than exporting) to PDF.

    Personally I use PdfCreator but I'm sure you will find many virtual printer programs out there. PdfCreator allows to set the output format (and deviate from it's PDF default). PNG and JPG are among the many supported output formats.

     

    Regards,

    Ferdinand Janssens

  • Vaidas Guogis
    Vaidas Guogis

    Hello all,

    I'm also using an external PDF output for a years. You can check CutePDF utility too. The reason is very simple - I need PDF output from several programs. Additionally I can suggest you an utility named as PDFSAM (split and merge) to manage your files after printing.

    Regards, Vaidas

  • Tom Øygarden
    Tom Øygarden

    Hello everyone, and thanks for all the tips!

    I tried PDFCreator, and it did output a nice looking png, but after a whole lot of prompts! :)

    I will look through the help system to find out how to store the plotter configuration, as we do this on a very regular basis. In AutoCad I've gotten used to this nice and quick order of things:

    'plot' -> drag window -> type filename -> enter

    then hit space to repeat :)

    We have huge situation maps that we use to draw symbols on each corner of each house for levelling projects. Then we enter a number next to each of the symbols (thanks for the autonumber, GeoTools, requires half the work than the ACAD expresstools 'tcount' function does), then export each of the buildings to a png file which we later import into a excel book with one sheet for each building.

    I'm beginning to think I should learn some more VBA, so I can go home earlier :)

    Anyways, my hope is that Bricscad and GeoTools can make this process even smoother than acad.

    I must say again, thanks for the help. It's nice to be on a educated and civilized forum ;)

    Regards, Tom Øygarden, Oslo

  • Jim Canale
    Jim Canale
    Tom,

    Autocad R14 had a way to create and configure print drivers for jpeg, tiff, bmp, eps, and other formats.  The resolution was also fully configurable for resolution, number of colors, grayscale, etc..   I know this because I created a bunch of really massive bitmap files - in the dozens of megabytes, both black and white, and color.    That was the way I exported my CAD drawings to a bit map so a local graphics house could print some high resolution artwork for us.   I also still have printer description files (*.PMP's) for jpegs, tiffs, and eps formats in my old Autocad customization folder.   Not sure if *.png's were supported.  And not sure if BricsCAD can do anything with these *.PMP's.    

    I submitted a support request for this capability in BricsCAD last week.   They replied that I can use the "BMPOUT" command to create a *.bmp.    (It works, I tried it.)     However, the *.bmp format is very low resolution.   640 x 480, I believe.    You could use a freeware bitmap viewer and editor like IrfanView to save it as a JPG or PNG.


  • Bruce Fillmore
    Bruce Fillmore
    Not sure if this is an acceptable solution or not, but I run a program called AcroPlot, it can be used as a virtual printer to print PDF files, or it can be run as a standalone program that can convert DWG files to png, jpeg and many other formats, it can perform the conversion on a list of files all at once so you do not have to do each file individually. 

    I use it mostly to write many files of varying types into single PDF's with bookmarks. (very handy)

    Also comes with a PDF editor that can be used to type in info in any PDF.

    Here is a link to their site;

    AcroPlot Site

    Bruce
  • Anthony Apostolaros
    Anthony Apostolaros
    I use Paint.NET for this purpose, i.e. to make an image file showing part of a drawing. It's freeware, available at www.getpaint.net

    When I'm looking at something I want to convert to PNG, I press the PrintScreen key to copy what's on the screen to the Windows clipboard, then I switch to Paint.NET and paste it, and then SaveAs.
  • Mateusz Lawrynowicz
    Mateusz Lawrynowicz

    (A full year since the last post in this thread) a colleague showed me a simple workaround for the lack of publish to JPG. NB it only works if you need output into an application with Microsoft metafile ability, so it might not fit everyone's needs! It works on the combination of Bricscad V15 and MS Word 2007.

    My situation is that I have over 100 simple sketches in Bricscad which I need to get into Word. In AutoCad, I would have plotted them using PublishToWebJPG.pc3 (here are some keywords for you, google)

    In Bricscad, I select the sketch in modelspace, and Paste Special into Word using "Picture (Enhanced metafile)" or "Picture (Windows Metafile)". The picture that gets pasted in is the size of my current view mirror in Bricscad and can be cropped and scaled (!) to a very impressive extent. It is however advisable to Zoom -> Window on the objects to be copied to maintain quality.

  • Resto Mara
    Resto Mara
    Free virtual printer
    • Convert your Documents to PDF, JPG, PNG, TIF and more
    • Merge multiple documents to one file
    • Profiles make frequently used settings available with one click
    • Use automatic saving to have a fully automated PDF printer
    • We take care of the complexity and make converting PDFs simple for you

    http://www.pdfforge.org/pdfcreator

  • jamesvala
    jamesvala

    Hi all

    My name is James and i am convert image png to jpg using onlineconvertfree site, This Site is Very Use full To Convert png to jpg.

  • robertgale
    robertgale
    • JPG is a lossy format while PNG is a lossless format.
    • JPG is better for photographs while PNG is better for created images.
    • JPG supports the embedding of EXIF data while PNG does not.
    • PNG supports transparency while JPG does not.

    Which one to use?

    • JPG is the most common format that’s in use. But you should be careful as image quality degrades with every save.
    • PNG makes for great screenshots if there are no gradients in the original source. PNG is also a good option for images which need transparency.