WMF Import

[cadman57]

I recently installed the free Xara Xs software from the Computer Shopper disk and was really impressed with it - particularly as I spend a lot of time creating coloured presentation drawings from CAD files. I exported part of a CAD file as a wmf file (I figured this was probably a good option as it would keep everything in vector format) and it imported perfectly.
Because of this I downloaded a trial copy of Xara Xtreme to check out some of the extra features. Unfortunately I can no longer import the wmf files correctly - they are distorted ie. The aspect ration is incorrect, they seem to be squashed up in the Y axis. I also downloaded the Xtreme Pro version and the same problem occurred. Presumably I could save my Xara Xs file as a native Xara file and open it up in Xara Xtreme, but if I do upgrade I don't really want to have this hassle every time. Could anyone suggest what the problem might be?

Thanks

[Albacore]

Can't reproduce what you say in XPro5 either in AI or MS Paint both open with the proper scale and pixel dimensions! Maybe you could do a re-install?

[MarcT]

Hi Cadman,

You can try to export to illustrator from your cad application, or to print with a pdf printer (there is a couple of free ones).

Pdf printing tends to be less accurate than illustrator (AI) files.


Marc

[cadman57]

Thanks for your feedback. Unfortunately, AutoCAD doesn't appear to export to AI files. I have tried the pdf option and that works okay (not quite as accurate but will probably do). I have noticed though that whereas the wmf import came in quite cleanly with all lines separate, the pdf import seems to group some lines together (even different thicknesses) The `ungroup' option is greyed out and I just wondered what the method was for `exploding' to individual lines.

Thanks

[ss-kalm]

Typically the pdf export/import is better than the wmf when arcs are involved. Do some experimenting, but I have found that the wmf doesn't handle arcs well.

The explode is probably the "break shapes", rather than ungroup.

[MarcT]

You can also try Postscript plot in Autocad.

It will cast an eps file