0

I often work with 3D CAD models, which I receive as SolidWorks or PDF files. I need to turn them into black & white line art, like you'd find in a patent application. (In fact, exactly like what you find in a patent application!)

Acrobat-9 allows me to rotate & scale the models, so I can print them with reasonable resolution, but the rest of my drawing toolchain deals with SVG files, while all I can get out of Acrobat is bitmaps. (I also make models from scratch in Blender, and make line drawings using rendering procedures there, but that also produces bitmaps.)

Is there some way to get from a 3D view to an SVG picture (preferably with relatively simple Bezier curves and scaled line weights)?

(As an example, imagine that I have a 3D model of a cube. I position it as desired, then (somehow) convert it to an SVG image with several straight lines where the edges are, with the line weights scaled according to the distance between the edge and the camera/viewer.)

Dave M.
  • 1,178
  • 8
  • 27
  • I wouldn't use Acrobat to rotate/scale - I'd always try to get them in their native format, such as SolidWorks, and do it there. I've not used that product, but should think that a 2D wireframe/vector rendering should be exportable from that? Addendum: the difficulty of a 2D rendering in a PDF is that its 3D information is lost, so adding in line weights or other perspective information certainly isn't trivial, and I'd think would be impossible. – halfer May 22 '12 at 12:50

1 Answers1

2

if you have rendered views as PDF files, you can use inkscape's command-line tool to convert PDF to SVG, as discussed on this post.

case there are no rendered PDF's available, you can export PDF snapshots from within CAD prior to converting them.

you can also try other converters made for this purpose, like verydoc or PDF-tron.

Community
  • 1
  • 1
Eliran Malka
  • 14,498
  • 5
  • 72
  • 96