Exporting high resolutions drawing files

[jaysinn]

I prepared a line drawing in Alibre Designer that I intended to upload to a web site that only accepts PNG format drawings. However, the exported PNG file directly from Alibre was severely pixellated and lost essential information.

Eventually I found the work-around: I used "Publish to PDF" from Alibre, and this created a file with acceptable resolution. Then I used Irfan View (updated with the latest plugins) to import the PDF file and export it as PNG.

 

[concept]

Thanks for the tip. That's odd that any company would accept mechanical drawings in only PNG format. By nature, engineering drawings tend to contain fine details, making PDFs the export of choice.

 

[jaysinn]

The web site, https://www.radiomuseum.org/ is dedicated to antique radios, and most of the line drawings they handle are schematics. Which also do contain fine details. Once they publish the drawings on their site they are in PDF format. But between the user's upload and the web site publishing they've added watermarks identifying the web site - so maybe by starting with PNG they find it easier to add the watermarks. My schematic editor does do a successful export to PNG with adequate resolution.

I've found that if I zoom in on the drawing in Alibre and then export to PNG, the resolution is fine. BUT it only exports what's visible on the screen! So I guess this could be a "wish list" for Alibre Drawings to be able to export to PNG (and other formats) with a user-selected resolution, and exporting the entire drawing, not just what's on-screen. My schematic editor (ExpressSCH) does this; why not Alibre?

 

[bigseb]

So I guess this could be a "wish list" for Alibre Drawings to be able to export to PNG (and other formats) with a user-selected resolution, and exporting the entire drawing, not just what's on-screen. My schematic editor (ExpressSCH) does this; why not Alibre?

Probably because submitting a drawing just to have others put their watermark on is something no engineer will ever want. IP and all that.

 

[jaysinn]

There can be many other reasons for wanting to export in high quality to bitmap, PNG, JPEG, or other formats than PDF; the above thread just happens to be my specific situation. (I'm retired and doing things like antique radio restoration as a hobby, and want to contribute to the community of hobbyists.)

 

[bigseb]

Jpegs are terrible anyway, very lossy. Pngs are not lossy but great for printing. Pdfs are still the best for printing. Either way I can't see Alibre doing this soon as there is a pretty long list of geniune engineering-specific requests not to mention actual design feature improvements.

 

[SergioP.]

For this kind of convertions normally I have a PDF printer (PDFCreator) that allow me to print the drawings in several formats as PDF or image ones as TIFF (the better imho for technical drawings) or PNG, and adjusting several parameters as resolution, orientation, colors...