Word into ArchiCAD and Plotmaker on MAC X

[Anonymous]

Word into ArchiCAD or Plotmaker on MAC OS X
Sometimes it works as a past element but most times the transfer come out with far different format and is unsuable...Any Ideas ? Solutions ?

[Chazz]

The inconsistent paste results seems to have something to do with the length of the word doc. Single short pages work well and after that it's any ones guess. In my experience the best way to get Word docs into your drawings is to do it in PM.

Without going into great detail the key is to use the excellent GraphicConverter from Lemke Software (version 4.5 and above) The steps are like this: print your Word pages to a single PDF, then use the the batch conversion feature in GC to convert the PDF to individual raster files in a format like Jpeg. Be careful about the size of your images or the size of your plot files will explode. In Word it is sometimes nice to use an 8.5" X 22" custom paper size. This fits nicely on a Arch D sized sheet and is the max length for Word pages (perhaps it's longer in Word 2004). All of this can be automated in GC using Watched Folders or at worse AppleScript. The advantage to laying up these pages in PM is they will also update automatically every time you re "print" the PDF. For the auto updating to work in PM you have to make sure you use the same file names/paths and thus overwrite what was there previously.

In the OS9 days many folks (myself included) used Print2Pict which was fantastic but this method works well also. But the bottom line is that PM (and AC) needs to be able to import a PDF directly!

HTH,

Chazz

[Mark Wallace]

atelier wrote:
Word into ArchiCAD or Plotmaker on MAC OS X
Sometimes it works as a past element but most times the transfer come out with far different format and is unsuable...Any Ideas ? Solutions ?

Make sure the 'Office Clipboard' (found under View) is open before highlighting and copying text from Word. Then I switch over to Plotmaker and paste with very consistent results.

Every so often, the 'Office Clipboard' seems to fill up and freeze. I then have to do some deleting. Also the Office Clipboard does not always copy all that is highlighted so double check what gets pasted in Plotmaker. Seems like Microsoft likes to run alternative OS's within the computer's environment with a limited number of characters.

I've never tried moving text from Word to ArchiCAD. I use the copying features to move text concerning general notes, specs and code data that does not involve graphical or CAD data.

Still Productive on 7.0, in OSX.3

Mark Wallace

--------------------------------------
Mark Wallace Architect
P.O. Box 26537
Collgeville PA 19426-0537
(v) 610-454-9510
(f) 610-489-6585

[Anonymous]

having finally eradicated all ms software from my computer this has reminded me why i did it

more usefully, maybe, is there no option in word to copy as plain text or rtf?

not wishing to be rude, but importing text as as a raster file seems a little crazy (but i agree that it's a workaround for AC's, sorely lacking, lack of pdf support)

bill

[Chazz]

A very stale thread and now that AC 10 is supposed to import PDF this is a little to late for some.... but saw this today and thought it could be a solution for many using AC9 on OSX and earlier.

http://www.colorpilot.com/spool.html

[Anonymous]

We are similarly optimistic about PDFs in AC10, but we are also looking to switch from MSWord to Apple Pages so that we can PDF 22x34 documents for our D-Size sets. Hopefully this sad OSX text affair will be behind us all by June...