With summer vacations in full swing, I went looking for the CAD drawings for
my latest project just after my client's point of contact went away. So, I
was looking for PDF to CAD converters as I did have a .PDF set of the
drawings.
I ended up trying 3 "trial" converters and had success with 1:
I started with the trial version of PDF2DXF2012. On my machine, the
installation did not seem to work and the trial seems to only give you a
viewer rather than the actual .dxf file so I was not able to fully test this
converter and didn't have time to keep playing.
Next was VectPDF - this tool seems to be a plug in with AutoCAD allowing you
to make the conversion from within AutoCAD. Sounds neat but I am not an
AutoCAD user so that did not help my situation.
The third converter I was successful with was Able2Extract 8. The trial is
limited to 7 days and only 3 sheets per conversion but it installed and
outputs either a .dxf or .dwg (with other options as well - Excel, Word &
Powerpoint). I selected the .dxf and was able to open the resulting file
into eQUEST to trace my model custom footprint and zoning. There are
probably other good tools out there but I was pleased to find one that
worked with limited fuss and let me get on with my model. The link for
Able2Extract is investintech.com
am not affiliated with the company, just found the tool useful for what we
do!) The cost of the software is $100 or $35 for a 30-day subscription.
Cheers,
Brian
