Fractal pattern won't export to PDF. Any suggestions?

[jimhanus]

I've made a simple background consisting of a red rectangle and a transparent fractal overlay. You can see the different layers in the attachment. When I export to a pdf, only the red rectangle exports. Any ideas why? I've tried a number of things but it's always the same result. Also, I'm getting the dreaded Out Of Memory warnings, even though my memory graph shows I still have 2GB available.

Thanks,
Jim

[Big Frank]

Select your group, Right-click, Create bitmap copy. Then export to PDF?

[jimhanus]

Thought of that. Is a fractal pattern as created in Xara a vector file? I thought it was. I'm trying to export and maintain the vector component (if it has one) to scale it up from 24" wide to wall size and keep the quality. If the fractal fill is produced as a bitmap I guess it really doesn't matter. Anyone know?

Jim

[zaphodeist]

Fractals are a scalable in vector space (mathematically created naturalistic fill patterns) only while it's a .xar file

From the Help file:
Fill types flat, linear, circular and elliptical are all mapped directly to equivalent PDF types, but the other more complex fill types (Conical, Diamond, Three Color, Four Color, Fractal Cloud fills and Fractal Plasma fills) supported by Xara Designer Pro 6 have to be represented using bitmap fills in the PDF.

[jimhanus]

Any suggestion how I can export this to maintain the vector so I can send it to a printer so he can scale it up?

[David O'Neil]

My uses of fractal effects indicated that they are not truly calculated on the fly. Rather, they seem to be bitmaps that are processed by Xtreme, and they have a width and height limitation. I could not get them to work for some situations without a repeating pattern appearing. If I had to work with them more, I'd seriously consider using Photoshop to create the fractals and import them into Xtreme.

[Gare]

Not having seen your design, Jim, I might suggest that you create a fractal bitmap (IOW, create a copy based on the original filled shape) at a resolution your printer is happy with, and then clip the bitmap to your original shape (put the shape behind the fractal bitmap, select both objects, and then press Q). By doing this, I think that the Acrobat export filter will recognize the bitmap clipped to the shape, while keeping the vector shape crisp.

Generally, a fractal pattern is scalable and all that good stuff, but it's still usually expressed as a bitmap.

My Best,

Gary

[jimhanus]

OK, thanks guys. I'll give these suggestions a try.

Jim