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Inspiring
April 24, 2023
Question

Maintain position of diagrams from imported PDFs relative to anchored frames in table rows

  • April 24, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 544 views

My FM document contains hundreds of individual syntax (railroad) diagrams. My process for creating and importing them into FM is as follows:

  1. In Visio, create multiple diagrams (10 – 20) per page in Visio.
  2. Export .vsdx files as PDFs.
  3. In FM, create a multi-row table, and insert an anchored frame into each of them.
  4. In each frame, import the PDF by reference, and align it appropriately.
  5. Create named destinations for all keyword (shown in blue text) descriptions, which are provided elsewhere in the FM document.
  6. Create a hot spot around each keyword and link them to the appropriate named destination.
  7. Group the imported file with the keyword hot spot(s) in each table row.

This method works well until I must insert a new diagram between two others in the original Visio page. The PDF created from the new Visio file throws off the alignment of the other diagrams imported into the table rows previously.

I am looking for a method that will maintain the position of the PDF file relative to the anchored frames. I’m open to completely new ideas other than recreating all the diagrams! Also, there is no chance that I’ll create separate files for each diagram!

Note- I had used color views previously to create “invisible” cross-references from keywords to their descriptions. I think that method is better because I don’t have to create all the keyword description named destinations. But, I have the same problem with misalignment using that method too.

Please refer to the diagrams I've attached.

Thanks in advance for your help-

Lauren

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    1 reply

    Jeff_Coatsworth
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    April 24, 2023

    Sorry, but I think you completely set yourself up for future failure with this structure - because stuff always changes! If you had saved them out as individual files in the first place, you'd have no issue squeezing in as many were needed now. I suspect you're going to need to clone & edit the pages that need insertions as separate images (copy PDF; edit PDF - keep only the one image; import by reference back into table). At least that way you only need to fool around with the pages that need edits & not the entire project.

    Inspiring
    April 25, 2023

    Thanks, Jeff. In hindsight, I should have kept the diagrams as I had inherited them--as a combination of special hex characters. I could not create separate files for each diagram because there are probably a thousand diagrams!

    I may be able to continue the route I am taking if I use a new Visio page for each modification or insertion. When I export from a multi-page Visio file to PDF, Acrobat creates the same pages. But, FM let's you pick which page you want to import. Thanks for the brain nudge.

    frameexpert
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    April 25, 2023

    There is a way to script the importing of multi-page PDFs into a FrameMaker document. This may be useful for your particular workflow.