How to Force Raster Design to Work with a PDF

Background: While AutoCAD 2010 can insert a PDF or use it like an XREF, the Raster Design software can’t work with PDF documents. The PDF file needs to be converted to a bitonal image in order to work with the vectorization tools in Raster Design.

There are several options for working with a PDF with Raster Design.

1. Use Adobe Acrobat to convert PDF’s to a TIFF image.
2. If you don’t have “full blown” Adobe Acrobat, do the following
   a. In Adobe Reader, go to Tools > Select and Zoom > Snapshot tool.
3. 
   b. Place a Window around the portion of the PDF you wish to use with Raster design.
   

c. This will copy the selection to your windows clipboard.

d. In AutoCAD 2010 go to Paste Special (Home tab, Clipboard panel, Paste Special).

e. Paste the object as an Image Entity. Click OK.

f. Click in the drawing to place the image. Hit enter to accept a scale of 1, rotation of 0.

g. Once the image is placed in the DWG, select it, the right-click on the it.

h. From the right-click menu, go to Image > Write > Save As.

i. Save the image with a name that you can recognize and in the same Windows directory as your cad file. (If you don’t do this step, it will be easy to lose track of the file!)

Next, you’ll convert the image to Bitonal, then convert it to indexed color, then back to bitonal. The reason we need to do this is because the first bitonal conversion inverts the colors (white becomes black and vice versa).

j. From the Image tab, the Edit Panel, click Process image and select Change color depth.

k. At the Command line you are prompted to type B for bitonal. At this point the image becomes a “negative” of itself.

l. Repeat the command, but this time convert it to indexcolor using I. The image will not appear to change.

m. Repeat the command for a third and last time. Convert the image back to Bitonal and the colors will be back to normal.

n. Save the drawing and proceed to work with the image as you normally would in Raster Design.