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gslaugs
gslaugs
Participant
December 22, 2016
Question

need to overlay squares on a PDF that can change colors w/ mouse click.

  • December 22, 2016
  • 1 reply
  • 1949 views

Hello all,

I'm a novice illustrator user.  I work in an oil refinery.  We have technical drawings that show lines (pipes) and valves (triangles).  I need to find the right application to take a base technical drawing and add an interactive overlay where I can place squares over the valves to show whether they should be OPEN (green), CLOSED (red) or OPEN/CLOSE (blue).  The technical drawings are PDFs.  Right now, we're using "PDF Annotator" to color our drawings.  This is very time consuming and the color squares must be re-done for every new project.   A master drawing with an interactive master overlay that allows quick toggling between colors is what I'm shooting for.

Not sure if this is possible in illustrator.  I'd appreciate any suggestions or direction you can provide.  Thanks in advance.  

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    1 reply

    Doug A Roberts
    Community Expert
    Doug A RobertsCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    December 22, 2016

    it is not something you can do straight out of illustrator. it is something you could do in Acrobat by turning those elements into buttons that hide/show each other (for instance: green is visible initially, click to hide itself and show red, click red to hide itself and show blue, click once more to hide blue and show green). do you have access to Acrobat Pro/DC?

      Doug A Roberts
      Community Expert
      Doug A RobertsCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      December 22, 2016

      or you could do the same with an interactive PDF out of InDesign.

        gslaugs
        gslaugsAuthor
        Participant
        December 23, 2016

        I was making a similar one with Layer Visibilty:


        Mr. Fakkad & Mr. Frederiks,

        I need to further clarify my goal  - I'd like to toggle between a semi-transparent RED - GREEN - BLUE - BLANK box with a very small medium gray border.  The "blank" option allows the box to remain in the master overlay fully transparent so our facility operators know that the valve is not "active" for the specific job we're doing.  Looks like the functionality should be there in Acrobat Pro - I think my next step is to acquire a version of Acrobat Pro and start experimenting.  Just wanted to clarify what I'm trying to accomplish.

        ++++++ Thank you SO MUCH for your time !  +++++++

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