A

Anonymous

Question

Importing Visio diagrams into Framemaker

Forum|Forum|15 years ago
December 6, 2010
2 replies
5849 views

Hi all, I am considering using framemaker9 as my main documentation tool, and using visio2003 as my diagramming tool.

As such, I will be importing the visio diagrams into framemaker by reference so that any mods to the visio diagrams will be automatically reflected in the framemaker document.

The questions I have is:

1. Which file format is the best to use for the importing? Should I save the visio diagrams in PDF or SVG format? I would prefer a format which provide the most resolution.

2. When I have more than 1 page in a visio file, I noticed that there is no way for me to choose which page to be imported when importing in SVG format. However, with PDF, a dialog box would pop up to allow me to select which page in the visio file to be imported. Is this a bug in framemaker or have I missed some step in the process of importing SVG file?

3. When importing some graphics/diagrams into an anchor frame, is there a way to make the imported graphics/diagrams automatically adjust its size to fit into the anchored frame area? If so, what are the steps?

TIA

BTW, I am just an engineer trying to document my work.

This topic has been closed for replies.

Y

ysadler

Known Participant

This is a roundabout method, but it works reasonably well. My engineer pastes

his Visio drawings into a Word document. I copy the drawing from Word and paste it into a Photoshop document. Then I save that as a tif and import.

The resolution is still not that great, but it's been acceptable, as long as I don't have to take the drawing too big.

V

Van Kurtz

Inspiring

ysadler,

I would avoid copying anything, including bitmaps created in Photoshop, from a Word document. The result is the screen preview, not the underlying image. I suggest trying to get the engineer to save the Visio drawing as eps or PDF. Then you can open the eps or PDF in Photoshop and set the resolution to anything you want.

Van

A

Anonymous

Hi Van,

You mentioned saving the visio diagram into EPS format. I have visio 2003, and was unable to do so.

Could you give the step to do so?

TIA

M

mtorrenc

Participant

The process I use is to create a PDF of the Visio diagram and import the PDF into FrameMaker by reference. Multi-page Visio files just make it interesting on the configuration management/version control front, but you make a PDF of each individual page to be imported.

The only thing to be sure you do in Visio is size the page to the graphic before creating the PDF. This has worked well for me with jobs with 500+ Visio graphics.

V

Van Kurtz

Inspiring

I never use Visio. If you can make a multi-page PDF from a multi-page Visio file, then you can import a page of the PDF file into FrameMaker by reference. It is NOT necessary to create a single PDF file for each page in the Visio file.

HOWEVER, you cannot import all the pages of the PDF file at once. You can import only one page at a time; however, you can import the PDF file more than once, selecting a different page each time. When you update the Visio file and then update the PDF file, the imports update automatically when you open the Frame file.

Furthermore, if you change the name of the PDF file and open the Frame file, FrameMaker prompts you only once for the location of the missing PDF file. If you had each page of the Visio file saved as a separate PDF file, then you would be prompted for PDF file because there is no way for FrameMaker to know that the separate PDFs belong to the same Visio. This is one advantage to using a multi-page PDF.

A

Anonymous

I like the PDF method of importing. However, I am wondering whether I will loose any detail when the graphic is displayed on monitor (as opposed to printed form). I have heard that SVG is better when viewed on display. Is this true?

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