PDF File Conversion

This may be a tad outside the groups normal? parameters, but hope that
some helpful soul might be able to provide an answer.
I recently received a CD with literally hundreds of PDF files, containing
as-constructed survey information (generated from various CAD applications,
incl. AutoCAD and MS-CAD). The drawings all tied to legal boundaries,
posts and integrated monumentation.

Does anyone know of an application that will convert the PDF's back into
drawing or vector files? I've searched several of the popular sites
(Simtel, TuCows, PDF Zone) to no avail.

Thanks,

P.J.

 

See http://rkmcswain.blogspot.com/2005/04/pdf-dwg.html for some
suggestions.

 

There is at least one program which will reverse engineer PDF to DWG or
DXF - probably called something like pdf2dwg or similar.
The problem you will have is that even with rescaling, the resulting
drawing will be nowhere near the accuracy of the original, particularly
if survey coordinates are being used. Precision in CAD is generally far
higher than in the resultant PDF. You might be able to modify entities
using the written dimensions, but it might be quicker to redraw from a
print .....

 

Yeah,

I have a sneaking hunch you're right about that.
A friend of mine tried a trial conversion for me, using Corel Draw, and it
was really poor.
Also tried PDF Ripper with only slight improvements.
I have the sneaking suspicion, that these files were created from scanned
drawings, instead of being created by printing the drawings directly to
Acrobat.
I think the software to which you referred is published by "Trix systems",
called pdf2vector.
Am going to try a shot with it.
I'll post results later this week.

Thanks again,

P.J.

 

Open the PDF files in Illustrator, then export as DWG. If there is any layer
info in the PDF files (probably not, though), it will translate back into
Illustrator and then AutoCAD. Presumably the PDF's will have been created at
a scale and you'll need to rescale back to get the drawings the proper size.

Marc

 

Thanks, Marc,

Yours is the second suggestion for using Illustrator for this purpose. I'll
post results.

Regards,

P.J.