Hi Michael in previous posts / discussions I indicated would be great to have some workflow based pdf features. Mainly as it seems it’s the best way to get sharp vector visualisations.

On expirementing with a workflow where I am deliberately not trying (or wanting) to re-edit any moi export pdfs in acrobat, Corel, or any other pdf editor I have found a very simple way to work.

For me currently, there is one major limitation with the pdf export which I found a workaround for but feel you can solve easily…

if I decide to say export 15pdfs from one moi drawing to create a presentation and I’m using pdf software to put a “watermark”
behind these pdf pages - then if I put “fit to page” in moi the graphics/pdfs and I then merge all these pdfs using a simple pdf merge tool then moi output can often be a bit too too tall or bit too wide.

Can I please ask for a valid feature to be added to the pdf export window, we need to have “fit to page” but allow users to set a maximum % of the fit or allow a padding value?

I found a workaround to put a tiny dot above the graphic
which is about 0.5mm this is selected as an export object and not visible on the pdf rendered but it proportionately reduces the output graphic size.

Hi stefano, adjusting padding is more difficult than you might expect because it needs to be coordinated between PDF, AI, and SVG formats and it's done in different ways in each of those.

But it sounds like a scale factor that would scale output around the center of the page would be ok?

- Michael

Hi Michael, I guess we could see equal padding is the result from scaling and reducing the scale factor proportionally so yes we’re on the same page I think.

If you look at page 1 of the pdf I sent you that is an example on a landscape pdf where the portrait type object is about 20/25% too tall THEN If you look at page 4 you might with your skills find my trick 0.5mm dot in the pdf somoewhere…I put this above the main moi object and it reduced the scale - but I think that dot works more as a “top pad” because the object is still quite far down the pdf page. Padding would be ultimate control I guess but proportional scaling is still going to help - a lot.

I just need a bit more control on the pdf output position and/or size. Anything you see as doable is appreciated.

Hi Stefano,

The thing to know about PDF output from MoI is that it's padded by 18 pt (4.23 mm) on left/right and 12 pt (6.35 mm) on top/bottom. You can get output of predictable size by making the bounding box of all the objects coincide with the aspect ratio of the usable part of the exported page. I do that by drawing a bounding rectangle around what I'm exporting.

For 8.5 x 11 inches it works out very cleanly that a rectangle having an aspect ratio of 3:4 is perfect.

- Peer

Hi Peer thanks for that useful information- appreciated!

I will no doubt try the bounding box ratio but for me that’s likely only valid for one off pdfs. On one of My pdf export tests I used a 0.5mm “hidden” dot above an object kind of created a boundary constraint as well; even though a bit more arbitrary.

I like to attack problems head on and that includes minimising any extra work. This workflow idea of mine is about trying to create visuals and collate potentially a lot of PDFs quickly.

I am likely to be selecting a lot of different objects or views so I feel drawing bonding boxes every time i want to control pdf output defeats the goal.

To give you some extra context-

This all started because I work in fluid ways and do a lot of screenshots from moi and/or in other programmes -BUT as it goes sometimes in moi when objects are close together or even a dimension is on a surface you get artifacts - so screenshots are out of the window sometimes. I then concluded “let’s see if we can do pdfs all the way” and look to get pdfs out of moi that can also look like the viewport.

My workflow goal is to have the highest quality “screenshots” in pdf vector format. So the end goal is this pdf export process might need to be as fast as screenshots or more flexible in rearranging them afterwards.

I’ve also emailed Michael with a few extra ideas and I think he might be making a few improvements for next beta. I sense pdf scaling might be coming very soon ;0)