Re: Software for technical illustrations

--- In CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@yahoogroups.com, Hal Eckhart <hal@c...> wrote:

> On 7/9/04 9:30 PM, Fred Smith wrote:
>
> >--- In CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@yahoogroups.com, "ddgman2001"

<sheldon@d...>

> >wrote:
> >> I'd like to use some of my CAD drawings in an owners manual. Is

it

> >> possible to get the drawings into MS Word or Publisher for page
> >> layout without them turning into blocky looking bitmaps or jpegs?
> >
> >There is no need for bitmaps and jpegs to look blocky if used with
> >Word or Publisher. Use the Print Screen (or ALT-Print Scrn for

just

> >the Window with current focus) to copy your screen view to the ...
>
> I'd like to add that there's no good reason to JPEGs at all or

bitmaps

> (at least BMPs) if all you want to do is draw lines and text. To

make

> them legible you'd have to make them huge. Try using GIF or PNG.
> Smaller files, and a whole lot prettier. My guess is that the only
> reason these ugly formats have been so widely used by cad vendors

has to

> do with the now expired "patent" on the GIF format and the fact that
> many people don't realize that PNG works fine in almost any browser.

The reason that jpeg is used is because the picture are not limited
to 256 color palette images as in GIF. Rendered/shaded surfaces are
displayed (in Gif) with wide bands of "close" colors from those
available in the current color palette. Gradient fills are humorous.

Bit maps is usually used to describe 256 color pallette images or
uncompressed formats, even though the jpeg and other compresssed
formats are also ultimately a bitmap display image. Image formats
seems to be commonly used to include all the various "bitmap"
formats, vector graphics image is used to describe cad type files
(iges, dxf, hpgl, etc), and metafile is used to describe compound
filetypes that can include both vector graphics and bit mapped. Tru-
type fonts are vector formats, but they are displayed with a bit
mapped fill on the screen. Some common metafiles are : WMF-Windows
meta file, CDR- Corel Draw, PS- Post script ( although PS is actually
an interpreted language, but meta file includes that too), EPS-
Encapsulated Post Script, and PDF- Portable Document format,
(trademark of Adobe).

> MS Word format is fine, as long as you don't mind that many people

won't

> be able to read it,

Anyone with a Windows operating system can read it as Wordpad is
included on all Win OS's. That is the OS on most personal
computers. They can print it too.

>the files are unnecessarily bloated, and they can be
> used to transmit macros that can be written to do pretty much

anything

> that an evil 8 year old can think up. Word is still pretty widely
> accepted, but I can't understand why. PDFs work on any OS with a

free

> reader that most people already have.

PDF is Adobe's proprietary format. The image files embedded are Tiffs

I can't understand why more people don't realize what a rip off Adobe
is. They make Microsoft look like a bunch of philanthropists. All
their software was written to run on the Apple Mac and has been
poorly ported to both unix and Windows.

The upgrade from Acrobat 5 to Acrobat 6 is over $250. That's MORE
than what Acrobat 5 cost. Their software is the most "Phonin' Home"
of anything since the Kornakova virus.

> Just to be a petty old geezer (because I am) jpg, gif, bmp, png,

tif and

> many others are all bitmaps.
>
> For fun I converted a 6.3 K png to bmp and it turns into a 876 K

file!

> As a jpg, it's 20 K and ugly.

Try it with a full screen shot ( ie over 1000 x 1000, 1,000,000
pixels) and with something besides 16 colors. You will find that
once you reach the point where a photographic quality is required,
that the GIF and PNG will quickly fall by the wayside. I think you
will be really disappointed if you use a digital photo from one of
the cameras that take 2.0 meg and up pictures.

Also today, documentation often gets printed on color printers, what
looks great on a 100 dpi video screen, will look like dog doo on a
1200 dpi color printer. That's where jpg shines as you can save the
file with varying degrees of losses, depending on the intended use,
hi-res printing or screen viewing in 256 colors.


Fred Smith - IMService