pool design help

[ryan osmun]

i trace about 40 pools a day into autocad. i use a calcomp drawing board. im wondering is there a way to put the pdf image directly into CAD so that i can just trace it directly in CAD? this would save an enormous amount of time if any one knows any way i could make something like this possible. im using cad2012

[ReMark]

Look at the IMAGEATTACH command. It might help.

[ryan osmun]

that works exactly how i want it to, the only thing is that it accepts just image files, for some reason it will not open a pdf? any ideas on how to get it to open pdf?

[ReMark]

I can't recall but isn't there a PDFATTACH command as well?

[ryan osmun]

youre right and that worked perfect! thank you for the quick help!

[BIGAL]

Drag and drop auto starts PDFATTACH also

[danellis]

The ATTACH command combines the two, so a single command can attach both images and PDFs.

 

dJE

[Dana W]

I find it quite tedious tracing a pdf on screen. I'd much rather use a digitizer for the task, and probably quite a bit more accurate too. I miss my 60" x 96" Calcomp digitizer table I used back in the stone age, circa 1981. The biggest problem I have with pdfs or images to trace in AutoCad is the scaling issue. It takes the better part of half an hour to get it anything close to accurate. At least with a digitizer, one is usually dealing with a known scale factor.

[ryan osmun]

I find it quite tedious tracing a pdf on screen. I'd much rather use a digitizer for the task, and probably quite a bit more accurate too. I miss my 60" x 96" Calcomp digitizer table I used back in the stone age, circa 1981. The biggest problem I have with pdfs or images to trace in AutoCad is the scaling issue. It takes the better part of half an hour to get it anything close to accurate. At least with a digitizer, one is usually dealing with a known scale factor.

 

Actually only takes me a second to scale. Ive been using it now for a day i find this way much easier

[TKall]

Wow, that's handy. Thank you.

[tzframpton]

I've used Revit for pool design and found it very fun, actually. Super easy too. Linked below is the bound PDF of some preliminary designs I made for our marketing team when we interviewed with the city for the job. If you feel it is something you'd be interested in, maybe Revit might be in the future for you?

 

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4989089/Images/cadtutor/2013-02-21/Galveston%20Pool%20-%20Final.pdf

[ryan osmun]

ok so the scaling wasnt as correct as i thought...im scaling only in one direction...does any one know how to scale both the X and Y axis separately?

[ReMark]

You would have to create a block and upon insertion you would have the option to set the scale of X, Y, and Z to something other than uniform.

[ryan osmun]

I've used Revit for pool design and found it very fun, actually. Super easy too. Linked below is the bound PDF of some preliminary designs I made for our marketing team when we interviewed with the city for the job. If you feel it is something you'd be interested in, maybe Revit might be in the future for you?

 

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4989089/Images/cadtutor/2013-02-21/Galveston%20Pool%20-%20Final.pdf

 

im not actually designing pools, i draw the pool from a fax or a pdf that has been sent in to me. i then design pop up cleaning heads in the pool. so im not sure this would be software for me unfortunately

[tzframpton]

im not actually designing pools, i draw the pool from a fax or a pdf that has been sent in to me. i then design pop up cleaning heads in the pool. so im not sure this would be software for me unfortunately

Oh okay, makes sense.

 

[Dana W]

Actually only takes me a second to scale. Ive been using it now for a day i find this way much easier

It may be that the pdfattach or whatever you used is inserting the document at full size. That's a good starting point IF the drawing on the doc is to a scale. my 2009 LT won't let me do it that way, so I have to convert the pdf to an image file first, and that resizes the thing unless I want a file of several megabytes to deal with.

[ryan osmun]

You would have to create a block and upon insertion you would have the option to set the scale of X, Y, and Z to something other than uniform.

 

is there a way that i can turn off the aspect ratio, so that i can scale in two directions?

[ReMark]

There is no "aspect ratio" to turn off.

 

You create a block. Next you insert the block. Upon doing so you have the option to change the scale in all three directions (X, Y and Z). The default of course is typically a uniform scale. You can override this. However, keep in mind, that you are now working with a block.

[BIGAL]

We occasionally redraw a pdf the one thing we do is scale as normal but for curves we use true measurement of plan rather than guess or 3pt, genrally its to do with roads so we check on-site widths etc to make a bit more accurate.

[mrav8r2]

I've used Revit for pool design and found it very fun, actually. Super easy too. Linked below is the bound PDF of some preliminary designs I made for our marketing team when we interviewed with the city for the job. If you feel it is something you'd be interested in, maybe Revit might be in the future for you?

 

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4989089/Images/cadtutor/2013-02-21/Galveston%20Pool%20-%20Final.pdf

 

tzframpton,

 

Do you use Revit in this fashion to do any pool wall detailing? Perhaps a structural question I'm sure. This is along the lines of what I want to incorporate into my offerings.

 

Thanks in advance for any dialogue.

 

.KEB