On V5 beta I'm chasing my tail trying to get to the hidden lines dialog during a save-as PDF. I see the same issue in V4.

What I'm seeking to accomplish is to generate a PDF which includes the background image along with the MoI objects. I am only able to see the MoI objects in the PDF.

My drawing and image are centered on the origin.

I've played with the Image settings Draw and Show in, but these don't seem to change the PDF output. Transparency is set to 50%

View / Display hidden lines is normally unset but setting it does not seem to help.

From the documentation, during a save-as, I should be seeing the options for generating outlines, silhouettes & hidden lines and these are apparently related to the output of the background image, but try as I might, I am unable to see these options. Setting Scale to either "Fit to page" or "Preserve units" doesn't help. I've even tried editing moi.ini and setting GenerateOutlines=y within [AI/PDF Export]. I did have more coffee and even did some searching on the forum, but all to no avail, so resorting to asking what seems like a really basic question!

--Larry

Hi Larry, a hidden line drawing will be generated if you have surfaces or solids that are being exported to PDF.

If you only have all wireframe curve objects a hidden line drawing will not be generated and so you won't see the hidden line options like "Generate outlines".

If you put in a solid like a sphere or a box then you should see those options but the "Shaded background" option is for exporting a rendered image with light source shading at the bottom level of the PDF, with vector curves layered on top of it.

Any background images that you might have added under View > Image in MOI will not be exported to PDF neither for wireframe export nor hidden line drawing export. Those background images are meant to be used as a reference image for drawing or tracing. They don't export like regular objects.

But one way you can capture them is with a screenshot, try this:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=9787.2

- Michael

Thank you very much Michael!

The screenshot script solved the problem & your answers provided the necessary insight as to what I was misunderstanding.

--Larry

Hi Michael,

Although I own my own misunderstanding, here are the sections from the documentation that got me going down the wrong rabbit hole with respect to thinking that I could get a PDF which included the background image (emphasis mine):

from the "Hidden line options" section:

"Generate outlines" creates curves in areas where objects are adjacent to the viewport background. This can be used to give a bold accented border surrounding the entire object. It works in combination with the shaded background image, since the background image masks out the inner half of the border.

and in the "Image" section:

Background images are editable while you are inside this command. Click and drag on an image to reposition it. Dragging on a corner frame widget allows scaling of the image, and dragging on the rotation widget allows rotating the image. A click and release on the rotation widget instead of click and drag enables a different rotation mode that shows a 3-wheel rotation gizmo. When that gizmo is enabled you can click and drag on any of the 3 wheels to rotate around any of the 3 axes - click off of a wheel to exit this mode. Undo can be used to undo edits of the background images while still inside the Image command.

Seeing "background image" in both gave me some hope that I could get a PDF with whatever background image is currently visible.

--Larry