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Peter29260580lhur
Participant
April 14, 2023
Question

Imported PDF lines incomplete

  • April 14, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 1212 views

Hi there. I'm currently working on a technical design that was created in a CAD program, exported as a PDF and I'm getting incomplete lines when I bring it into Illustrator. Appreciate any help on this.

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1 reply

Monika Gause
Community Expert
Monika GauseCommunity Expert
Community Expert
April 14, 2023

Are there many anchor points on that path?

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Peter29260580lhurAuthor
Participant
April 14, 2023

No anchor points at all. It was a fresh import from the PDF

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Peter29260580lhurAuthor
Participant
April 14, 2023

A path cannot exist without at least 2 anchor points, so I'll assume you didn't understand the question.

 

I'm not a CAD operator, so my knowledge of it is limited, but I work with a lot of CAD-origin stuff. I see this from time to time, especially in cases where 'perspective' or perhaps other 2D CAD-based render-to-screen techniques have been applied. I suspect that cylindrical effect is borne of such a technique. The underlying, original CAD vectors are "stretched," figuratively speaking. They maintain the effect (and their perceivable integrity) in the native format, but it outside of the CAD environment, they break up as you see. It's possible there are unstroked anchors in those gaps. If you Select All (in Illustrator), you will see them, if they're there.

 

Otherwise, if you have access to the orginal, native file or the person who built it, there may be other ways to get around it.


I'm the original builder and have access to DXF/DWG and any file needed. There seems to be a line weight issue when exporting PDF. Either they are so thick that theres absolutely no detail to be had. Or when you disable line weights, it ends up like what you see in the screen shot. I've done some looking on fusion's forums and apparently this was told to be fixable in the future back in 2016 but never was. I'm currently trying to export the PDF's using another method involving manually chaning the line weights in "TrueView". God only knows if this will work. I was hoping Illustrator could be my savior and automatically connect these alias'ed lines. 

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