Control Save Settings

The upper portion of the dialog box behaves like a standard Windows Save As dialog box. You can navigate to your desired directory, type your desired file name, and choose the format for saving the file. Currently, the supported formats are as follows:

• PDF: Adobe Portable Document Format
• TIF: Tagged Image File Format
• Bitmap: Windows style bitmap
• JPEG: Joint Photographic Experts Group image format
• PNG: Portable Network Graphics format
• PSD: Adobe Photoshop Data file
• PCL-XL: HP Printer Control Library, version 6

Some of these formats support different color depths. The color depth determines how many colors to use when saving the image. To select a different color depth, use the Color Setting menu. For color images, use True Color, 256 Color, or 16 Color.

• True Color uses more colors than the human eye can differentiate between (and more than any monitor/printer can display/print), so use it for the highest quality images.
• 256 Color and 16 Color will produce smaller files, but with less color precision.
• Monochrome is black and white, and Grayscale supports many different shades of gray. If this option is set to less colors than the source drawing includes, unsupported colors will be replaced by their closest available approximation. Photographs and rendered images should generally use True Color, while schematics and drawings with fewer colors can usually be well represented with 256 Color or 16 Color.

The Open File check box determines whether or not to open the file with the workstation's default viewer after the file is created. Note: Windows does not have a default application capable of displaying PDF, PSD, or PCL-XL files.

Clicking Advanced will expand the Save As dialog to reveal or hide other options. Clicking Hide will contract the Save As dialog and hide the options. Not all publishing formats are compatible with all options.

The Image Compression section has two parts: PDF compression settings and the JPEG Quality menu. Compression options include Photographs (JPEG), Graphics (ZIP), and Default.

• If the drawing you are converting is mostly comprised of photographs, the Photographs (JPEG) option will produce the best results.
• If your drawing contains mostly line graphics (like an architectural drawing or schematics), then Graphics (ZIP) will produce the best results.
• Default will use whichever option is set up as default on your workstation.

The JPEG Quality list is only available when creating a JPEG image. Note: a PDF using the Photographs (JPEG) option does not count as a JPEG image.

This list allows you to customize how precise the resulting images will be. There are five options: Minimum, Low, Medium, High, and Maximum.

• Minimum will produce the smallest file, but the least precise image.
• Maximum will create the largest file, but the most precise image.

Naturally, Low, Medium and High will produce images with properties between those two extremes. There is usually a suitable balance between file size and image quality, so experiment with the quality levels to find the optimal setting for each drawing.

Select the Enable checkbox to activate a post processing operation as part of the PDF creation process. A second pass is performed on the PDF to correct certain conditions that may create non-optimal PDFs. Click Manage to display the following dialog:

Select the version of the PDF to save using the PDF version drop down menu.

• Select Process Wipeouts, Text Masks and OLE objects when creating PDFs from AutoCAD drawings that have text masks or wipeouts. This option is on by default for making PDFs from AutoCAD.
• Select Fix Striped Images to minimize where lines or stripes appear in images.
• Select Combine Adjacent Images to store images more efficiently in the PDF. This will also help to display certain images in PDFs created from AutoCAD correctly.
• Select Optimize Solid Color Image to convert any solid color raster images to vector.
• Select Remove Text Clipping if text near the upper margins of a drawing appears clipped.
• Select Simplify Clipping Paths to correct excessive clipping paths created around non-rectangular crop boxes which results in large file sizes.

Resolution settings determine the quality of the images produced by the plugin.

• Line controls how precisely the software will transfer the line vectors from the AutoCAD drawing to the image.
• Print will produce a higher-quality, but larger file, while Draft will create a lower-quality, but smaller, file. Draft is best used for electronic communication, while Print should be used if you intend to print or publish the document.
• The Image list controls the image resolution by adjusting the number of dots-per-inch (dpi) the image will have. Similar to the previous controls, a higher dpi setting will create a better image but will increase the file size.
• The Image Anti-Aliasing toggles anti-aliasing. Aliasing is the effect that causes jagged lines in diagonal or curved objects due to the square pixels on computer screens and printers. Anti-aliasing attempts to correct this by smoothing the image using intermediate colors between the line color and background color. The Text selection tells the software how much Anti-Aliasing to use on text, and the Graphics tells the software how much Anti-Aliasing to use with vector graphics. Note that this will not affect photographs or other pre-rendered images.
• The final section is Line Merge.
  • The Line Merge check box turns the feature on or off. For more information, please read the Line Merge section
  • The Blend Mode list controls how lines are blended together
  • The Opacity list controls how opaque the top line is.