TBC - Importing PDF's - When should you import as sheet or join dashed lines?

Over the past few weeks, import questions have been raised several times so I thought I should post them here for everyone’s benefit.

Import as Sheet (yes/no)
The answer largely depends on what you are importing and why you are importing it.

  • Cross Section Sheets - If you are importing cross section sheets, select yes to import as sheets.

  • Plan Sheets - If you are importing plans, select no to import as a view.

Join Dashed Lines (yes/no):

  • Joining dashed lines is useful in most cases if you intend to extract linework because otherwise dashed lines will come in as hundreds of small lines that are not that useful.

  • Be aware though that if the PDF does not have text that text characters can be seen as a dash pattern and get joined together as can hatch patterns like a concrete pattern and also some lines may get joined together that you do not want to join up.

  • Joining lines can sometimes help and sometimes can be not so helpful - in the PDF the dashes of a line are sequential in the file and are like pen up pen down sequences

  • TBC looks for sequences that look like a repeat pattern and joins them if it finds a pattern - it is not so easy to get right all the time.

TBC - Importing PDF's

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