quick replacement of autocad blocks in photoshop?

[rock1]

I am rendering a site plan where I have same tree repeated over and over again in autocad. Those trees are as simple circles as blocks in autocad. This means that if I change the radius of one circle, all the tree circles change automatically of that particular instance.

 

. Now, I want to replace those circles in photoshop with tree. Replacing them one by one is taking time. Is there a quick way to replace autocad block trees of autocad in photoshop with a different tree jpeg so that work time is saved?

 

[Cad64]

I don't know of any way to do it other than just placing them manually. It shouldn't take much time though. How many trees do you have to replace?

[BIGAL]

Try this I dont have photoshop, insert a tree image JPG into Autocad make it a block and insert the block where ever you have a circle then export to photoshop. No idea if it will work.

 

Ps you can put a block at every circle via a simple lisp.

[Dana W]

Here's a block (units = inches) that may be useful in the future, along with the image that is xref-ed into it. If you want to use it, put the image file where you keep your xref's. It is a simple tree dynamic block. copyclip it to one of your drawings. Each inserted image of a dynamic block can be adjusted individually once inserted, and this one is very simple to make yourself. Note that the circle in the block is on a NO PLOT layer, so you won't see it in print. You can also turn that layer off so you won't see the circle in modelspace. I can't do anything about the background, but you won't see it on white paper or pdf. Just make sure that anything that needs to be seen through the backgraound is draworder'ed above the tree.

 

Insert the block >> then select the block >> then click on the LEFTMOST grip >> Then type in a number of units for the radius of the tree image. The next one can have a different radius, and so on... Tht's what makes it dynamic.

TREE BLOCK.dwg

[BIGAL]

Dana great minds think alike, you could make the block Autocad objects hatch & lines etc it would just take a little bit of effort make one branch turn it into a block copy it and rotate change x & y scale etc hatch with different greens use rgb. Explode the final creation and remake into a single block.

[Dana W]

I found a very natural looking tree block once in a dwg by a company that shall remain nameless but has a real big amusement park in Orlando FL. It brought my Video processor to its knees. The block had close to 500 nested "branch" blocks, each with 1000 or so nested leaf blocks made of closed plines. It was an elevation view tree. I tried your technique on it to make it more usable. Exploded, exploded exploded for awhile to get them all, then ran overkill, which erased almost 100,000 overlapping entities. from now on my trees will look like this.

[BIGAL]

We had the same a branch, then blocked, copied then blocked, then copied about 5 times got it down to 1 block versus 4. We could not change its colour trees are green expect in winter for desciduous trees.

 

:lol

[Cad64]

I can't do anything about the background, but you won't see it on white paper or pdf. Just make sure that anything that needs to be seen through the backgraound is draworder'ed above the tree.

 

If you save the image as a .tif with an alpha channel, you can insert the .tif into Autocad and then in the Properties palette, enable "Background Transparency" and the background will disappear.

[rock1]

Thanks everyone!. I'll try these methods and revert back ASAP.

[Dana W]

If you save the image as a .tif with an alpha channel, you can insert the .tif into Autocad and then in the Properties palette, enable "Background Transparency" and the background will disappear.

Awesome, thanks. It's been a few years since the last tif so I'll have to go play with it. I thought I could do that with any image file but not true.

[Dana W]

Now, if someone can explain to me how or why the polar distance parameter and polar scale action result in the radius being incrementable per unit, rather than by scale factor as one might expect, I will be as educated as I can ever be. When I created the block, I expected it to scale, so in order to double its size I fed it a 2. It shrunk to a 2" radius instead of scaling by a factor of 2. This is ironic because I couldn't figure out how to increment the radius per unit, so I settled (I thought) for scaling it. I got what I wanted by coming in the back door, apparently.