Hi,
This program has been a great help whilst I have been completing my Architectural A levels
I have had some issues with exporting to a PDF file format. I have some 2D objects I want to export to PDF, when i 'choose fit to page' the object appears on the page but when I stipulate the scale between moi and actual measurements nothing appears on the page.
Just wondered if you have any suggestions as to what I'm doing wrong?
Many thanks,
Jacob

Hi Jacob - when you use the "preserve units" option for PDF export, MoI will only do some minimal processing of the coordinates so the conversion process can be directly controlled by yourself. To use this mode you will need to place your objects in the appropriate positions so that when converted into the PDF coordinate system they will be visible on the printed page. You could do something like draw in a rectangle of your expected PDF page size in the MoI model so you could have a better idea of what area in MoI's space maps to the page.

Right now it's likely that after being converted into PDF coordinates, your objects are way far away from the 0,0 page origin point and so are not visible on the printed page visible area.

I guess in the future I should make an option so that you could click somewhere to set a particular point as being the PDF page lower left origin point. But currently the 0,0,0 world origin is what will map to the PDF page origin.

Does that make sense for what you are seeing? If not, can you post the 3DM model file of the thing you are trying to export and also tell exactly what options you are setting on the export options dialog?

- Michael

Hi Michael,
Just spoke to James Elliot who has been a great help to me since he introduced me to the program and has literally just said exactly the same thing. As the object was too far away from the origin point as well as size of the object being an issue so nothing was showing up.
Thanks for answering my question quickly!
Jacob

Hi Michael,

On a related point: I couldn't find anyway to modify curve thickness when exporting to PDF.
Is this a feature you might be able to add please?

- Hamish

Hi Hamish, there is a method for controlling curve thickness for the PDF export - to use it click the "Line style options" button that shows up on the PDF export options dialog here:




Then inside that Line style options dialog, there are entries for Width that you can edit, those values set the line widths that are used in the PDF file. They are in typographic "point" units which is the native unit system used in PDF:



- Michael

Hi Michael,

Thanks, but I seem to be missing those PDF export UI options.

Here's all I see after clicking export, selecting *.pdf and entering the file name to save as:



Just to be sure I'm looking in the right place: I don't see any PDF export options under the Options > Import/Export tab. The screen captures you posted aren't from that location are they?

Cheers,
Hamish

Hi Hamish,

> The screen captures you posted aren't from that location are they?

Nope, they're just from the regular dialog that pops up on save.

But the options that I showed before will only be displayed if you are doing a hidden line drawing generation by exporting solids and surfaces as part of the PDF export, if you are exporting only wireframe curves alone those options won't show up.

There is not currently any way to modify the line thickness for a wireframe curve export, that's set to only use a width of 1.0, with colors and layers coming from style assignments.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Thanks! That explains everything :)

In case anyone is interested, here's a work-around to 'Export Selected' or 'Save As' wireframe curve objects with any desired line width to PDF:

- Create a single small planar object anywhere in the drawing - even a 0.0001 x 0.0001 mm square seems to work.
- Either initiate 'Save As' command or select the planar object and desired wireframe curve(s) and initiate the export process.
- Voilà! - the otherwise missing PDF export options are now available.
- Select 'Generate outlines' (only) and set the desired line width using: 'Line style options' > 'Visible lines': Width, (NOT 'Line style options' > 'Outlines').

Inspecting the generated PDF using Nitro PDF, I find the small planar object never gets exported.

- Hamish

EDITED To highlight use of the 'File > Save As' command.