topic Re: Export for PowerPoint in Visualization

!Restored: Export for PowerPoint

Anonymous — Thu, 11 May 2023 13:02:20 GMT

Does anyone have some usefull suggestions on how to incorporate ArchiCAD plan images into PowerPoint?

Creating a imagefile like JPG,TIFF etc. offers not enough quality. Publishing an EPS gives no image in PP and PDF can't be inserted in PP(2000) unless using a link and opening it in Acrobat reader which is not an option. So far only save the plan as a Windows enhanced Metafile seems to give a reasonable result, but I was wondering if there are more options.

Re: Export for PowerPoint

stefan — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 15:17:14 GMT

Did you use JPEG? JPEG is best for photographs, where you have lots of colors and lots of small gradients.
It is particulary bad for text & graphical lines. Use TIFF or GIF and the lines will be as sharp as they are in ArchiCAD.

You can use screenprints: what you see is what you get. But it is best to prior set your OS at a resolution of 1024x768; as is the default when doing PP presentations.

Powerpoint will display every single pixel you capture, as long as you don't rescale, so the imagery is identical to what you see in the ArchiCAD plan or 3D-window.

So conclusion: do not rescale screenshots and don't use JPEG for them (unless set at a high quality setting).

Re: Export for PowerPoint

dwyckoff — Mon, 26 Jan 2004 17:40:12 GMT

For giving away all my secrets I normally charge $80 US per use.
I have found EPS files to be the most consistant. For my process you will need a raster image manipulator such as Photoshop, but any of the others will do. Follow this sequence:

First - calibrate both you PC screen and, if you are using one, your projector. Use a photo card that has a number of colors and gray scale bars and an actual photo. This is necessary because projectors can seriously mess up an image by not showing the proper colors that you originally saw on your PC.

Second- Determine the size of the page you are working on in PP. If you want the image to fill the entire screen you will need to make an image at least that large at 72 dpi.

Third - Print to file (EPS) using the options that you normally would be using for printing, by window, entire drawing. Then open the file in Photoshop telling it to not convert. Then flatten the image and save it to the format of your preferrence. You can manipulate the image any way you want to suite your taste. I find higher contrast and lower white levels work fine. But with experimentation you will find your own preference.

Fourth - Open the file in PP and place and shrink. Do not enlarge. If you need to enlarge, print to the EPS in a larger format and then process again. If you want to use the file to print - instead of using 72dpi use 300dpi and resize the format accordingly.

I have a paypal account for all tips and money you feel obligated to throw at my feet.

Re: Export for PowerPoint

Anonymous — Mon, 26 Jan 2004 21:37:46 GMT

Laurens wrote:
Does anyone have some usefull suggestions on how to incorporate ArchiCAD plan images into PowerPoint?

I know it doesn't answer your question, but when I see what one has to do to get plans in PowerPoint... Have you ever thought of making your presentation with Adobe Acrobat ?

You could prepare your "slides" on Master layout made to fit your screen def (I guess the first time preparation should take a little time, but will be good for everything)... And then print them on any PDF Driver... You could then edit the PDF in Acrobat (full version) to make links, insert videos, etc.

Dwight and several others have already made several presentation in Nottingham and they used Acrobat : the result was really convincing (for someone like me that doesn't know much about Powerpoint)...

Re: Export for PowerPoint

dwyckoff — Mon, 26 Jan 2004 22:10:52 GMT

So...can acrobat make things fly in and out? If you are doing a static slide show it may work, but we have arrows and text and graphics fly in from off the page and fly off when we want to go back to the main image.
I had one 45 minute presentation that only had 7 slides, but printed had 64 pages.

Have any Mac users started using Keynote? I hear it can whoop PP in a fight. Native quicktime import...never have been able to get PP to play QT movies in a decent manner.

Re: Export for PowerPoint

Dwight — Mon, 26 Jan 2004 23:48:17 GMT

AAAAAArgh!!!
DON'T USE ACROBAT FOR SLIDE SHOWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Too much RAM needed - some things don't project properly - like animation bits and it can be slow with oversized images.

Invest in Powerpoint or Keynote for Mac.
Use the transition tools to make interesting "animated" slides.
Powerpoint has an advantage currently in that it can make a timed slide show that Keynote cannot.

The easy way to get images into Powerpoint or Keynote is to cut and paste using a screen capture tool like SnapzPro or whatever....
Set the capture size to equal your presentation size and forge onward, copying and pasting from ArchiCAD into Powerpoint as you develop your lecture. You can thro them out later if too many...

Concern for resolution is approriate - I spend a lot of time using 800x600 projectors, so am careful to use large type. Remember that you have an unlimited number of slides, so that you can easily take screenshots of zoomed-in bits as you speak to clearly illustrate the details of your plan as you go. This is better than using a pointer.

Architects always put too much on the screen at once - think of it as telling a story. You will achieve better understanding the more linear you make the thought process of your audience. Lots of slide changes with few pieces of info is better than one overly-detailed plan with a droning voice and a laser pointer. Ask me, I know.

I'll be addressing this very topic at ACUE in March. don't miss it. The EARLY BIRD SPECIAL is going to expire soon.

Re: Export for PowerPoint

Dwight — Mon, 26 Jan 2004 23:59:04 GMT

Both programs are on my laptop and bigbox. I like Keynote because the interface is more fluid - creative. Keynote can't do a timed slide show. That is importnt and will arrive soon.

Powerpoint is very Microsoft - If you like their other office products then Powerpoint will be fine. I like it. Klunkier.

Since I own a Titanium Powerbook 667 with Panther, Keynote doesn't work properly - why I've gone back to Powerpoint.

If you are considering Keynote for yourself, see:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25677

to learn about the problem on your machine. They will probably fix the issue soon.
_________________

Re: Export for PowerPoint

Dwight — Tue, 27 Jan 2004 00:10:01 GMT

About movies:

For absolute reliability when making presentations, especially remote presentations with a stranger's projector, avoid animation. There is nothing worse than a black square.

My bias is showing, but [and you'll see it in my Pomona lecture] considering how small an animation is, and how poorly they project, consider making a series of full-screen renderings of high quality at regular intervals along your animation path and in your multi-media presentation doing smooth crossfades between them.

Women like this better than animations. Excuse me. That is a sexist generalization. I mean to say, SOME women have complimented me on the smoothness and clarity of my work because they can see more clearly the details and aren't disoriented by dynamic movements [like the first-person shoot-em-ups some ArchiCAD TALK fellows do] in lousy little animations. With my looks, any compliment is a good compliment.

The advantage to crossfading stills is that notes can be inserted at appropriate pauses - when you get to an important place, you pause there for discussion.

Please comment on this - I think it an important issue seeing how so many uselss animations get touted as good stuff.

Re: Export for PowerPoint

Dwight — Tue, 27 Jan 2004 00:32:51 GMT

A way to do this is to "keyframe" everything - no in-betweens, with each camera set specifically at an angle that makes a point in your lecture.

Re: Export for PowerPoint

Anonymous — Tue, 27 Jan 2004 09:17:39 GMT

Dwight wrote:
AAAAAArgh!!!
DON'T USE ACROBAT FOR SLIDE SHOWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Too much RAM needed - some things don't project properly - like animation bits and it can be slow with oversized images.

At least we know what not to use now 😉 !

Re: Export for PowerPoint

Anonymous — Tue, 27 Jan 2004 09:25:50 GMT

Dwight wrote:
The advantage to crossfading stills is that notes can be inserted at appropriate pauses - when you get to an important place, you pause there for discussion.

I never do "movies" : I've found that rendering a flythrough / around / sun study frame by frame is much more efficient : when presenting to clients, you can scroll from frame to frame to get "near movie quality" animation, but clients usually are not interested in the movement : they want to see details and what they'll get from different point of view.

I've never added comments in some frames of a rendering but this seems rather a good idea...

How do you make your smooth crossfading ? Powerpoint ?

Re: Export for PowerPoint

Dwight — Tue, 27 Jan 2004 10:07:53 GMT

At least we know what not to use now 😉 !

That was quite an outburst that needs clarification:

Initially it looked like Acrobat was the way to go - certainly, three years ago a passable presentation could be done from pages originally set up to be paper. We were all showing off things from books we had written and the transition was simple - except that the dense text of a book never translates to the screen.

A recent Adobe seminar used PDF pages, but they were being shown on bigbox Macs with plenty of Video RAM. The point was to show how animations could be built into these pages, originally designed in Adobe Illustrator for print.

The Keynote and PwerPoint applications make multi-media more fluidly composed and inherantly more aniimated. And need less video RAM to do it.

Re: Export for PowerPoint

stefan — Tue, 27 Jan 2004 10:18:44 GMT

Our architectural Students are doing presentations very regularily. Probably more then professional Architects do. In fact, I did no presentations after school anymore, while I was working as an architect. Hadn't touched Powerpoint for 4 years (never had a need) untill I returned at the university.

There is a tendency with our students to switch to Flash, as it is both a presentation & webdesign tool and most of them are getting fluid with it.
Plus, it's available for Mac & PC and the presentations are mostly vectorial (the text and drawings, not the images of course), so it scales reasonably well and animates rather fluent.

But be careful before you jump ships, it is a whole new toolset. And don't forget you can get very far and "designerly" with Powerpoint as well, if you avoid the typical default templates and bullets and colors.

Bytheway, I use Swish, which is a lowcost (PC-only) alternative to Flash. It costed me $50 for a full version (I did an upgrade from a Lite version, which I got for free, but since SwishMax is released, the new price for Swish2.0 is only $50). They have fully functional demoes to try. The demo mangles your text to turn it unusable, but you can get a good taste.

It is not as extensive as Flash, but it'll get the job done. SwishMax is the newest version which added scripting and Forms, but most presentations can be done just fine with the Swish 2.0 version and even the Swish Lite (1.5) is usable and it's only $20.

http://www.swishzone.com

Re: Export for PowerPoint

Dwight — Tue, 27 Jan 2004 11:53:44 GMT

How do you make your smooth crossfading ? Powerpoint ?

In both Powerpoint and Keynote individual "slides" can transition using cross fading. The basic crossfade in Powerpoint is a rather klunky bunch of boxes that scumble around to simulate a crossfade, but later editions include a smooth Quicktime transiton that is cinematic in quality, like Keynote's.

Also, these presentations can be exported as QuickTime movies to play like animations - not the best, but something that can be sent away....

Re: Export for PowerPoint

Dwight — Tue, 27 Jan 2004 11:55:08 GMT

And of course, Powerpoint can create a self-contained slide show that is quite compact in size, set to play automatically when started.

Re: Export for PowerPoint

Haneef Tayob — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 17:49:40 GMT

This is quite an old topic (so it might have been answered somewhere else)
I simply use the copy-paste option. You can select the elements before copying or use the marquee to isolate a specific area.
If you paste this into Powerpoint, the result is a vector format which is easily scalable and cropped. I prefer not expting plans and sectiosn to tiff's or jpegs as the vector option is much clearer and with smaller files.

Re: Export for PowerPoint

Haneef Tayob — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 09:02:27 GMT

Haneef wrote:
I simply use the copy-paste option. You can select the elements before copying or use the marquee to isolate a specific area.
If you paste this into Powerpoint, the result is a vector format which is easily scalable and cropped.

Why can't I do this anymore in ArchiCad11
Any suggestion of a workaround?
The simple 'copy from AC then paste to Powerpoint' I used to do since AC6 does not seem to work in AC11. I've tried testing by opening older files in AC10 and the feature works.

Re: Export for PowerPoint

Erika Epstein — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 20:11:40 GMT

Have you tried copy and pasting using the edit menu instead of shortcut keys?
Sometimes that makes a difference.

Re: Export for PowerPoint

Haneef Tayob — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 06:30:57 GMT

Erika wrote:
Have you tried copy and pasting using the edit menu instead of shortcut keys?
Sometimes that makes a difference.

Tried it, still does not seem to copy items to Windows clipboard