Disappearing scanned drawings from screen in AC10

[Scott Bulmer]

We typically use scanned legacy info in our projects. Placed Photoshop or JPG files worked well in PM9. NOW in AC10 they regenerate much more slowly, and eventually (within 10 steps) disappear. The drawing box remains, but is blank.

We've tried placing the drawings in layout book two ways with the same result. 1) directly placing the original file in the layout book & 2) using the figure tool in AC, then placing a view set.

They will come back after restarting the program & update then reload/rebuild, and it seems turning off the auto save feature helps for a while, until they disappear again.

Please see attached & thanks.

[Thomas Holm]

Have you tried expanding the placed drawing windows, to see if their contents moved outside the clip boundary, but is still there? I've had that issue in one project - but it was placed linked views, not jpgs or photpshop files.
You can also check the drawing settings to see if the link is live.

One a side note, I'd try saving the pictures as pdfs instead and placing them directly. While I haven't noticed a speed difference in 10, I've found pdfs work fine in AC10. Using the figure tool is a workaround that I don't recommend if all you want is to place them on layouts. Figure tool is for placing scans on floor plans to interact with modeled or drawed content.

[Scott Bulmer]

Thanks Thomas,
In response to your suggestions:

I had expanded the frame and know that the drawing is still there. I know this because when I Update it, the image appears for a split second before disappearing again. I suspect if I plot the layout, they will all be there.

This behavior occurs in both embedded and live linked drawings. Links were OK in Drawing Manager.

Per your suggestion, I created a PDF's of the PSD files, which are behaving better, but the screen regeneration is still extremely slow (approximately 25 seconds for a 24" x 36" layout sheet with PDF files of text). Every time I have to open those sheets I just want to kill myself, just kidding.

I tried using the Figure tool as a last resort to see if it made a difference, which it didn't.

Something is definitely not right. Just can't put my finger on it.

Thanks again,

Scott

[Anonymous]

It sounds like it might be a display driver issue. Especially if it prints OK.

[Djordje]

Is the 2D OpenGL accelleration on? Switch it off.

This is definitely a display issue, or it can be the video card memory/image size problem.

[Thomas Holm]

I'm not sure if this is related, but during the beta test at one time I had an issue of extremely slow screen updates in a project. It turned out that I had an object library with some less compatible old (8.1 I think) library parts loaded.

The reason for this was that I had migrated the file to AC10 by creating a .pla file in AC9, which I had set to save all related attributes as well as the objects.

When I instead migrated the AC9 .pln file directly, just loading the AC10 and needed AC9 libraries, the incompatible library parts were automatically stripped out in favor of the newest versions, and I got normal screen update speeds again.

Please note that this may or may not be related to the non-displaying layout views - I don't know.

[Thomas Holm]

Re-reading you posts, I'd like to add a little guesswork that might affect this issue:

- first of all, test printing/plotting if you haven't.

- check that you have all Layers ON in your master layouts and/or in the specific layouts. This got me a couple of times, and is mentioned elsewhere in this forum.

- since you're working with raster scans, there might be a scale issue involved - try changing scale, at least to something even like 1/2x, 1/4x, 1/8x etc., always a multiple of 2.

- if possible, avoid rasters - use vector-only logos, stamps, pdfs etc. This will enhance speed and decrease file size too.

- also, when you create pdfs to use in Archicad, use Adobe's full Acrobat program - it always works better.

[Scott Bulmer]

Thomas,
1. PSD printed to PDF (cannot save as in PS) File dragged into PM10. File size 7.25 MB. Tested PDF as embedded and linked on different layout sheets.
2. All layers were/are visible.
3. Layout sheets able to plot PDF sometimes using both embedded and linked, sometimes part of the PDF was missing.
4. Due to sheet size, PDF was duplicated a few time with each copy stretched, but remained at 100%.

Djordje,
I know where the 3D Open GL setting is, but where is the 2D setting?

Notes:
Originally an existing PM9 lbk was migrated to PM10. Those scanned PSD’s were treated as drawings. Because I was having so much trouble with them, they were deleted. Now dragging the same PSD file into a layout sheet triggers the ‘Figure Tool.’ After the original migration, the boundary could be stretched and resized (behaved like a placed drawing). Now it can only be modified in the Tools Settings DB. That figure in the sheet layout will only display at a zoom of 9%. Any closer produces an empty clipping box. That layout will plot, but with an empty clipping box even when the image is visible at the 9% zoom.

I have been reusing scans of our legacy details and notes, trying to avoid re-inventing or at least re-drawing the wheel. Until now PM has been very accommodating, even when the file sizes are somewhat large in the example above. I am hopeful there is some remedy.

Finally per your recommendation, we should acquire Adobe Acrobat for conversion of scans to PDF.

That’s all I know for now.

Thanks again,
Scott

[Thomas Holm]

Scott, I'm out of ideas now. I avoid scans if possible, they bulge files and cause scaling trouble.

If you drag a raster file (photoshop or whatever) into an Archicad window (which the layout is now) it's logical that the Figure tool triggers. But it may be possible to use the Import Drawing (or whatever - I'm at home now) menu command instead of dragging.

If you insist on using scans, you should try to scale them in Photoshop to the final printing size at the resolution you need (considering the printer resolution and needed quality - not trivial). Then the 9% limit you crashed into won't matter. Also, if the photoshop file format seems to be a problem, you can save them as tiffs, or pdfs, from inside Photoshop.

You won't need Acrobat if all pdfs you produce are raster files only. Then Photoshop's pdf save will do.

I'm advocating Acrobat for all other purposes. You can Print any document to a pdf, and vector information (text, lines, figures) is preserved and not converted into rasters. And those pdfs can now be placed into Archicad if needed.