Discussion: Ocad9 importing pdf files

Hi I am importing a pdf file into ocad 9 but nothing is showing up - am a missing a step somewhere?

I was hoping someone more qualified could address this but incase you haven't figured it out, I'll attempt an answer. I have OCAD8 and you can't import a pdf file. However, you can convert the pdf to a jpeg and import that. Not sure if OCAD 9 is the same but that may be your issue.

You can import PDFs into OCAD, but the results are highly variable - I suspect it would be more sensible if it was a PDF of an O map, rather than the random PDFs I've tried in the past. :)

Andy - have you clicked the 'zoom to map extent' button to see if it's appearing somewhere off-screen?

Here's another attempt to answer the question. First, note that there are two ways to include another file in Ocad, one is to "import" the file, the second is to use the file as a "background" image. In Ocad 9 ...
1) Importable files ... ocd, ai, pdf, dxf, emf, shp, wmf
2) Background files ... bmp, jpg, gif, ocd, tif

To "import" a file, it must be in a vector format. Some pdf files are vector, others are raster. My guess is that the pdf file you have is a raster file, so it can't be imported. (Note that some files are a mix of raster/vector and the import function will only import the vector component of the file). To know if your pdf is raster, zoom in to a very high resolution and see if it starts to look choppy.

If it is a raster file, then you can't import to ocad, but you could convert to something like jpg/gif/tiff and then use it as a background image.

Before saying anything more, it would be useful to know what type of information you are trying to import.

1) If it is aerial photography that you want to use as part of the base for your map, then you can convert to jpg/gif/tiff and then use that as a "background" map to draw ocad features on top of.
2) If it is a scan of fieldwork that you want to incorporate into a map file, then your best bet is to include it as a "background" file and then draw ocad features over top.
3) If it is an image that you want to include as part of your map layout, you might want to convert to jpg and include as a "background" map (note that this can affect the quality of pdf export from ocad later on).
4) If it is a GPS track that you want to convert to trails (or some other type of ocad feature), then you can convert to dxf and "import" that.
5) If it is a product of some other GIS program (e.g., contour lines), then you should probably save it to dxf or shp and then "import" that (as it will then be georeferenced).
6) If it is a pdf map file (e.g., created by ocad itself), then you are much better off using an ocd file and importing that.

Note that if you actually get a pdf file to import, Ocad will create a whole new symbol set for all the features in the pdf (i.e., it won't automatically convert brown lines to contour lines, black lines to trails or cliffs, etc.). Converting such a file to a usable O-map would be a lot of work.