pdf's not visible in rotated orientation

[Anonymous]

PDF files imported into ArchiCad do not display when the using a rotated orientation. They display fine in non-rotated views. In my current project, north is to the right in all plan views. We got drawings back from structural as pdf's and placed them in the layout book, works fine. When I choose this layout as a trace reference, the pdf content disappears at the 270 deg orientation we are using, but re-appears if I change the orientation to 0. This is a frustrating bug.

AC 13, MacOS 10.6

[Thomas Holm]

This bug is still present, it just bit me. (Build 3259 SWE). But according to the release notes, I can't see that it's fixed in 3600 either. Embarrassing, GS!

[Anonymous]

Have you also noticed how fuzzy pdfs get after rotating the orientation over 55 degrees? (You may need to zoom in and then out again to trigger this) It gets progressively more pixelated the closer you get to 89 degrees, then at 90 the whole thing disappears leaving just the outline.

The same thing happens the other way too: at -55 degrees it starts getting fuzzy, then after -90 the whole thing disappears.

So you can't seem to use any angle between +90 and -90 (90 to 270).

This bug is in AC14 too.

[Thomas Holm]

Peter wrote:
Have you also noticed how fuzzy pdfs get after rotating the orientation over 55 degrees?

Well, as they ain't visible, that ain't no problem... 😉

I assume you mean fuzzy at output, printed or so. That's not an issue with vector PDFs as I'm using now.
With bitmaps, I wouldn't call it a bug, rather a consequence of how the software works. AC antialiases rotated bitmaps to make them less jaggy. To avoid this I try to rotate them beforehand in Photoshop, or use 600dpis and let Archicad output at 300.

(Edited)
perhaps I misunderstood you.
But anyway, the workaround is of course to work in an un-rotated view, and just rotate it before you save the view for placing on a layout. The invisible rotated PDF will show, on screen, rotated, in the layout window (which is weird in itself - to me it means that it should be easy for GS to fix this bug, hint, hint). And that's another workaround - have the layout visible at the side while you work - they you'll see what happens when you update the layout. Awkward but needed sometimes.

[Anonymous]

This is what I meant. I've had to resize the image in order to attach it so you can't really see the fuzzyness at 55 degrees, but it definitely occurs then.

The original PDF is a vector based drawing, not a raster/bitmap. (Just a random one I had to hand!)

As I said before, you may need to zoom in and out a bit to trigger the pixelation.

It's not a massive problem for me - it isn't really a feature I use very often, especially combined with a PDF, but it is interesting to explore the limitations!

[Thomas Holm]

Weird. I haven't seen that, but probably because I'm rotating a plan view (using the recent option Rotate Orientation) and not the pdf in itself. Testing now, i can confirm your observation.

I don't think it was a problem in earlier versions, I recall rotating pdfs there, but I don't remember at what angles.

Should be fixed ASAP!

[Anonymous]

Just to confirm - The PDF was placed straight on plan (as a drawing), and I just rotated the plan view using the 'Rotate Orientation' option. I didn't touch the PDF to produce the images above.

Edited to add - I have no problem with rotating the PDF on its own. It displays perfectly at any angle.

[Brett Brown]

Possible workaround? Convert PDF to PNG/JPG and the place them. Only mention this as Revit can't place PDF's yet so this is there workaround.