Sheridan College
Architectural Technology
CADD12384 - Architectural Drafting 2 - CADD

Exercise 3 - Importing AutoCAD drawings into Photoshop

The following exercise will demonstrate how to import an AutoCAD drawing into Photoshop.

Method 1: Using Cut and Paste

A. Open the drawing ELEVATION-PHOTOSHOP. (click or shift-click on the link, save it to the D:\USER folder, then open the drawing in AutoCAD).

B. Make sure Line smoothing in AutoCAD is turned off - go to Options -> System tab -> Graphics Performance to check this.

C. To export the drawing to Photoshop using copy and paste, we can use the view of the elevation as it is in modelspace - however this is not recommended as the different lines (colours) in the view will export as coloured lines.




Instead you should:

  1. Click on Layout 1. Set the printer to "none" (if we will use cut and paste to transfer the drawing to Photoshop, we will not have to print it), then set the Plot style to "monochrome.ctb" and make sure the "Display plot styles" checkbox is checked.
     
  2. The viewport should appear in the layout with the elevation in monochrome (black and white).
     
  3. If you have a black background configured for your layout, you should switch back to a white background. Go to Options -> Display tab -> Colors and correct this.

You are now ready to copy the elevation view into Photoshop.

D. Open Adobe Photoshop, and start a new image with the desired size. (in this case, use a 800x600 size image with 72 dpi resolution). Zoom 100% (full size), and adjust the view until the full image borders are visible on screen.

E. Switch back to AutoCAD, and zoom in/out on the layout in paperspace until the viewport is the approximate same size as the blank image area in Photoshop. Switch to modelspace, and zoom/pan/adjust the elevation in the modelspace viewport until it is the desired size. Change the layer display if necessary. Press CTRL-C (or Right-click -> Clipboard -> Copy), then select all the objects in the elevation that you wish to copy to photoshop.

F. Switch back to Photoshop, create a new layer called outline, and paste the contents of the clipboard (the elevation) onto this layer.

Method 2: Using AutoCAD Plot

The above cut and paste method is perfect for creating small drawings (drawings that are smaller than the screen size), but it cannot be used to create large size or high resolution bitmaps. For example, the above image created was 800x600 at 72 dpi, which makes it approx. 11" x 8.3". If we wanted to create the same size image for a large printer, assuming a resolution of 200 dpi, we would need an image size of 1760x1340 pixels! The cut and paste method will not work for an image this size.

Instead, we can configure AutoCAD to plot to a raster file (BMP or TIFF file), or to a PDF file.

A. Open the drawing ELEVATION-PHOTOSHOP. (click or shift-click on the link, save it to the D:\USER folder, then open the drawing in AutoCAD).

B. Go to File/Plotter Manager, and examine the printers configured. If there is no Bitmap printer configured, double-click on "Add a plotter wizard" and follow the steps below:

  1. At the "Begin" step, choose "My Computer".
  2. At the "Plotter Model" step, choose "Raster File Formats" and "MS-Windows BMP" or TIFF (uncompressed). The TIFF format is recommended here, especially if you intend to print the image as part of a desktop publishing layout.
  3. At the "Ports" step, choose "plot to file"
  4. For the plotter name, accept the default.
  5. Click on Finish.

C. The plotter is now set up. You can activate the layout:

  1. Click on Layout 1. Set the printer to the raster printer, then set the Plot style to "monochrome.ctb" and make sure the "Display plot styles" checkbox is checked.
     
  2. The viewport should appear in the layout with the elevation in monochrome (black and white).
  3. Choose a size for the plot (not that the sizes are in pixels). You can also go back to the raster plotter, click on properties, and create user-defined custom sizes.
     

You are now ready to plot the elevation view to a file. You can then open the file in Photoshop.

Note: Plotting to a JPG file is NOT recommended. JPEG images use a special lossy compression which will lower the quality of the image. JPEGs are excellent as a final image to be placed on the web, but in our case editing them can be harder than editing a similar TIFF or BMP file.