TFP Image trace & TFP to Turbocad

[John Hope]

I have two questions.
1. I tied tracing a snapshot of a PDF drawing.
    It seemed to race just fine and I could see my wall on top of the image, I now know I would have seen it better if I had used solid fill.
    The problem I have is that it seems that TFP is reading the actual sizes of the original drawing as the 64' wall in the image was 17" in TFP.
    Is there a way to convert?

2. I recently exported a drawing from TFP and opened in Turbocad.
    It opened very well and looked great, I could read all the measurements as well.
     The problem was that when I tried to take a measurement the 64' building in TFP was over 1900' in Turbocad.
     Is there a way to retain scale and measurement?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

John Hope

[Robert W - "robban"]

Hi John! The first question can I answer you on, but the second I can't, I have never use Turbocad.

1) Then you import a image to trace in TFP, the measurement you see is the image size not the drawing, you have to give a reference in the image a wall, or a measurment line of a knew size is the best no matter length.

Right click on the image and in many select "Resize Image", click on start point for the wall or measurement line, then click on end point of same wall or line, in the pop up window write in the real measurement, and the image resize tor correct size.  After that can you open  viewfilter and select  Notation click on selection symbole, for imported images, it will be wite so will not the image be change by misstake. The rest do you know.

I think Allan or Jack can help you with 2nd qustion.

/Robert

[John Hope]

Thanks Robert,
I look forward to trying out your suggestion.

John

[Allan Chesney]

Hi John,

I am going to 'pass the buck' on the TurboCAD question to Jack.  I have looked at it a few times and given up.  I do not have the time for the obviously huge learning curve!  Jack is currently preparing some training videos at the moment I think, on doing the very thing you want to do, so he will know the answer.  Try the Search too - I think this may have been answered before.

Re Tracing: If you do this again, you will find it easiest to crop the image right to the edge of the building (walls or roof) so you know the exact measurement. When you import, you simply enter that figure (eg 64') as the width of the image.  As Robert said, you can do it with the existing image, just not as easy as you no doubt have 'borders' around the building (unless you know how wide the border is!).

EDIT:  Just had a thought - I bet the TurboCAD issue is something to do with metric conversion. 64' x 12" = 768 inches. 1" = 25.4mm. 768 x 25.4 = 19507.2.  Got to be a connection here somewhere!

Allan

[Jack Zimmer]

 [quoteIs there a way to retain scale and measurement?
][/quote]

As Robert said, when importing an image the resize option is what you use. As far as detail goes, importing a bmp or tga file gives better clarity than a jpg. You still won't get clear 'thin' lines like in a vector drawing but much better with higher quality import. The ability to actually import a PDF file is available in Envisioneer PRO, although TFPlan 'Help' lists it as an option, I don't see it in TFPlan.

Importing a dxf file into TCAD is a simple conversion. Cadsoft is a Canadian company, so Envisioneer / TFPlan are metric based. Even though you see or may use feet and inches, behind the scenes metric is always lurking. It sometimes gets hard trying to figure out what is what and how to convert.   

But in this case , when importing a dxf export from TFPlan to TCAD there is a 'setup' option when you select the file to import. This is before the file gets inserted into TCAD. Click on the 'Setup' option, switch to 'mm' (milimeters) in scale option.

That's all it takes. Use 'mm'.

It will now scale properly in feet and inches in TCAD.


Jack

[Allan Chesney]

Thanks Jack - I thought it must have something to do with the metric background!

Allan

[John Hope]

Thanks Jack,
The conversion worked great.

John