PDF to DWG conversion in AUTOCAD LT 2017

By Dennis Collin 

AutoCAD LT may be limited compared to its larger brother AutoCAD, with no 3d and limited coding capability, but nevertheless it still remains an excellent package for the smaller drawing producing practice.

With the latest Release, 2017, LT  has PDF file conversion options, where PDF files can be converted to vector based DWG geometry, not only that,  we have the option to convert PDF layers to AutoCAD layers as well, along with improved text recognition options.

This new recent feature can be found under the INSERT tab on the ribbon interface.

Another aspect of the newest release is that enhanced features are marked up with orange markers, so users can explore improved and new features of AutoCAD at their leisure.

Importing a PDF file now looks very similar to the Block insertion and Reference Dialogue for drawing and image formats.

As you can see from the attached image, we can specify insertion points and scaling options, along with layer, line weight and line type settings. Brilliant, not bad for a limited technologies product or LT!

To supplement the geometry import AutoCAD can also recognise and convert PDF text entities into actual AutoCAD text entities. Not only that we can configure which fonts to scan and set a recognition level threshold which should reduce erroneous conversions, this will of course, depend on the quality and origin of the source PDF document.

To round off these enhanced conversion tools we also, finally, have the single line text to multiline text conversion routine which has been in the express tools add-on for AutoCAD for the past few years.

It’s called Combine Text although the keyboard can also be used (TXT2MTXT) which is a brilliant and much loved tool by many 'full' AutoCAD users.

These features are in my view a compelling reason to ensure you have the latest version of AutoCAD LT especially if you are working with legacy, scanned data and need to amend them and submit updated CAD files to clients.