[comp.graphics] Data eXchange Format

dan@systech.bjorn.COM (Dan Gill) (04/30/91)

Do tools exist to convert from DXF to say PBM or Postscript and Back?

Thanks,

Dg
-- 
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"On second thought, let us not go to Camelot.  It is a silly place"
Dan Gill                              [uunet ucsd.edu]!systech!dan
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sun@ME.UTORONTO.CA (Andy Sun) (04/30/91)

Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Data eXchange Format (DXF)
Keywords: Autocad Data Format
References: <877@systech.bjorn.COM>
Organization: U of Toronto, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering

dan@systech.bjorn.COM (Dan Gill) writes:

>Do tools exist to convert from DXF to say PBM or Postscript and Back?

>Thanks,

>Dg
>-- 
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>"On second thought, let us not go to Camelot.  It is a silly place"
>Dan Gill                              [uunet ucsd.edu]!systech!dan
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

First thing that comes to my mind when DXF format is mentioned is AutoCAD
(I am not awared of other software that generates this format but this doesn't
mean anything since my knowledge is limited). A simple answer for the above
question is no, there isn't any.

So far, PostScript seems to be the dead-end in any conversion chain (for
graphics at least, text is a little bit easier to extract from a PostScript
file, just a little bit). As for PBM, we are talking about two different
worlds (almost, discounting image tracing) here. PBM is a raster graphics
(bit map) representation whereas DXF is a vector graphics representation.

If you are really talking about AutoCAD in the above, then you can read
the DXF file into AutoCAD (I remember there are other desktop publishing
software that can take DXF format as well but I forget which ones) and
produce PostScript output from AutoCAD with the appropriate plotter driver.
As for PBM, you can probably do a screendump of the screen image to GIF
or other raster format and then convert it to PBM.

Andy

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