In TBC v5.70, Trimble introduced the ability to turn on Point Snaps in Vector PDF files. This is a great feature and applies when you Georeference an image. There is a small checkbox that you can check to enable point snaps in PDF files. Once initiated, to turn it off again you have to select the image in the Project Explorer and right click and select Georeference Image, check or uncheck the checkbox and click register to enable / disable the setting.
Once enabled, when you are drawing in the graphics, if the PDF page is visible and if the Point Snap function is enabled, you can snap to the points that are generated at every node in the linework of the PDF file. Note that these points are all 2D locations. This is a great feature and makes it faster and more accurate to digitize a plan with tools like Takeoff Lines, Quick Lines or Polyline, Linestring, Rectangle, Polygon etc.
However they also generate some issues too. The Point Snap when enabled is for some reason the highest priority snap, even if you change its position in the Running Snaps list, it still seems to dominate over all other snaps, and because it is 2D you cannot extract elevations. So if you are trying to do 3D snaps to nodes on 3D lines, you will only get 2D locations. To resolve this you have a few options
- Turn off the PDF page - all point snaps for a PDF page are only available when the PDF page is visible so turning off the page removes the point snaps to PDF based locations
- Turn off Point Snaps in Running Snaps list - this disables Point Snaps allowing you to snap to line nodes and ends etc. as normal and if these are 3D then you will get 3D
- Re - Georeference the PDF page and turn of the PDF Vector Snaps so that they are not available - this is like going back to 5.6.2 where this feature was not available
- Use right click snaps to select End Point and then click the line near the node that you want to pull out as a 3D and that will extract the 3D location.
I agree that you want to be able to use the 2D point Snap from vectors plus snap to 3D lines as a preference where you have them, however for me the benefit of having the point snaps in the PDF Vector file outweighs the negative that it created - you just turn off Point Snap when you don’t need it and things work pretty well - it can and will be improved I am sure. We also use the Point Snaps in PDF Vectors for our all new Vectors on Demand tools that releases today - so when you see that I think you will see the real benefits of the PDF snapping for auto feature extraction on demand (again I am of course biased!)
Alan