Please give us back the ability to save .EPS files

[David Larrew]

The only thing I miss about PlotMaker is the ability to save-out .EPS (encapsulated postscript) files.

.EPS is a scale-able raster image format that most image-editing companies use as a "standard" format.

Our marketing department requires .EPS format and currently the only way to get something usable is to save a .PDF and use Acrobat (full-license) to convert.

Come on Graphisoft... Give us back this ability!

[Eduardo Rolon]

Not to be critical but asking for EPS is like asking for DXF instead of DWG. PDF is the heir of EPS, any program that used to open EPS should handle PDF now. Your marketing department should upgrade to "modern" software

Anyway shouldn't the marketing guys be doing the conversion? They work for you guys not the other way around.

And the final option is that AFAIK if you print to the Acrobat printer (or Cute PDF which is free if you don't have Acrobat) you can specify the output as either Pdf or EPS.

[Piotr Dobrowolski]

But we are still able to save to dxf and dwg 😉

Maybe I am repeating myself but the EPS is LESS processed format than PDF, easier to handle in illustration software not to mention the arcs & circles vs. segmented polilines....widely discussed.

Best Regards,
Piotr

[Anonymous]

I am quite satisfied with pdf and find it much easier to work with.

But as eps is the industry standard AC should be able to save in this fommat.

[Eduardo Rolon]

Piotr wrote:
But we are still able to save to dxf and dwg 😉

Piotr

Agreed, there is nothing to be lost by keeping the option there (except for the programer that had to stop working on some other stuff, Maybe?) but would you send a consultant a dxf instead of a dwg? (joking)

[David Larrew]

Actually, thanks to Autodesk, I have had to send .DXF files to a consultant that could not read R2000 format (which is the oldest .DWG file format that you can save-out).

[David Larrew]

Apparently, some of you have never worked with marketing/advertising companies... .EPS file format IS their version in relation to our standard .DWG file format.

As pointed out, why take away something that we used to have and, no matter how much better .PDF format is, .EPS is the industry standard for raster file format exchange.

[Eduardo Rolon]

David wrote:
Actually, thanks to Autodesk, I have had to send .DXF files to a consultant that could not read R2000 format (which is the oldest .DWG file format that you can save-out).

The solution is called DWG gateway

www.dwggateway.com/pages/products/index.html

It lets any Autocad Release from R2.5 onwards to open dwgs created from any other Release. It is free and it works.

[David Larrew]

Thanks for the link.
I sure wish I had this a couple years ago, when I was having to save-down those .DXF files for that consultant.

[Piotr Dobrowolski]

David wrote:
.... .EPS is the industry standard for raster file format exchange.

Ditto, (one correction EPS is vector format 😉

Best Regards,
Piotr

[Eduardo Rolon]

Marketting types like using EPS as an archive tool for vector (fonts + shapes) and graphics/images. It is used as pdf is now to share a file without having to send the fonts and all the extra stuff needed to open the file. It is mostly Quark Xpress fault.

[David Larrew]

To counter-correct the comment, encapsulated postscript is raster or bitmapped/image-based... .PDF, a direct descendent of .EPS, is vector-based which is one of the reasons why when you create a .PDF from a high-res raster image, the .PDF is actually larger in size than the original image file.

But I digress,... We still need .EPS as an exportable file format in a program that produces graphic output. Especially, since the current built-in .PDF creation engine isn't 100% effective.

[Eduardo Rolon]

and to counter the counter, then why I could save Autocad files as EPS and open them in illustrator as vectors instead of images? If they are bitmaps then I should not have been able to do that? When you open an EPS file you can choose to rasterize it (convert it to bits) or you can open it an work with the vectors

and I just went completely off-topic in this thread.

[David Larrew]

Which adds to my argument... I CAN save an .EPS file in AutoCAD.

One of the reasons for this post (as well as other recent and future posts) is that I am converting my new office from AutoCAD + ADT. As with most ACAD users, they point out everything that AC can't do that ACAD already does.

I'm getting tired of wiping egg off my face while trying to convince the users that they can be just as productive with AC as they are with ACAD. Of course, once they learn AC, they stop resisting and actually get more productive.

I appreciate everyones comments, but would like to see more voting support to improve AC's export capabilities.

[Haneef Tayob]

David wrote:
...As pointed out, why take away something that we used to have ...

I agree. Someone out there may still need it.

By the same token, .pmk's export should also not have been dropped. I rarely use them anymore, but there are a few version 9 layout books which relied heavily on dynamic links to spreadsheets and other documents. Whilst understanding Graphisoft's issues around them, it's been difficult to migrate from those AC9 projects. Keeping support for .pmk's would have made things easier.

[Chazz]

David wrote:
I appreciate everyones comments, but would like to see more voting support to improve AC's export capabilities.

In OSX PostScript is supported at the OS level and therefore --just like PDF-- you can save as (actually print to) .PS from any app, AC included. The file sizes are gynormous. I know PS is not the same as EPS but illustrator seems to open them the same (for that matter it seems to open PDFs the same only faster which makes me wonder why anyone even needs EPS or PS anymore). And yes, EPS is a vector format.

As to the wish, this is just not something I miss or wish for. PDF is the future and we should embrace it.