Advanced PDF to DWG conversion

New features allow us to recover more information from the PDF

Besides converting or batch-processing your PDF files into DWG files, ARES Commander offers now the option to recover the layers organization and names but also to maintain the LineStyle and LineWeight of entities.

Recovering layers from a PDF file

PDF is a very popular file format to share drawings. However, PDF cannot be modified. In ARES Commander you can use PDF Import to convert the PDF file to DWG entities. Now you can go even further and recover the layer structure from the PDF file.

We can import the PDF and make all the entities that appear in the drawing grouped by color or group them according to the original layers.

Grouping entities in a drawing

Let’s see how it works, from the INSERT tab, choose PDF IMPORT. Select the desired file, choose one or more pages of the file to import. We need to determine, if we want to import the PDF information as a block, in case we only want to work with a single DWG.

We can also use BATCH PROCESSING if we want to convert many PDF files to DWG. ARES Commander will then create one DWG file for each PDF file exported.

Maintaining layers properties and line thickness

From Options we can choose, for example, to maintain the layers properties of the PDF file or group the information in the PDF according to the entities’ colors.

In this case, we will choose PDF LAYER. We can also determine to maintain the line thickness and the line styles – among other options. We chose the pages that we want to import. Specify an insertion coordinate, a scale factor, and a rotation.

Editing blocks in DWG

When selecting the drawing, we can verify that it is a block, and we can verify that the layer structure has also been imported. If we want to edit any entity of this drawing, we simply have to explode the block, and make any modifications we want. Besides, we can see that it recognizes the linetype and thickness.

Let’s try inserting the PDF, but with another option. Now we choose the option to group entities on one layer per color. Select the same view and press OK. You see now the entities have been grouped in layers according to their colors.

We can also choose to use the current drawing layer. We choose the view and press OK. We see that the whole drawing was inserted in a single layer, in this case the layer “0”.

For more information, press F1 to access the broad HELP section offered by ARES Commander.

To learn more about ARES Commander, visit our product page: ARES Commander