set up a tiff plotter and set a high resolution something like 20,000x10,000 i seem to get pretty good images that way...

or do like most will suggest here and bring it into illustrator.

If you are using a newer version of Acad (I'm looking at 2004 right now), under the plotters pulldown there is an option for "PublishToWeb JPG.pc3" that will do it all for you.

or the low tech method;
print screen, paste it to photoshop, crop, save as jpeg.

hmm. . .i'm quite new to autocad and i have autocad 14 so i'm sorry, because I don't understand your comments very well. but thank you very much.

While we're talking about autocad, does anyone have any suggestions on how to insert/paste excel picture into autocad? I am doing a drawing which contains a door schedule on it. I copied the original door schedule from excel and pasted it on autocad but it doesn't turn out so well when I print it. My workmates said in autocad they usually draw a schedule with mtext and lines. There must be a better way than this but I haven't been able to figure it out.

Hi

You must read the manual.

Thanks for the constructive response Per Correl.

To clarify a few comments: If you are using R14 the previously mentions “print screen” method will be easiest for you. To do this press the “ctrl – alt – print screen” keys at the same time. This will copy a screen grab of either your entire desktop or the active program window to the clipboard. Now open a graphics program (I’ll assume Photoshop for this) and create a new file then paste in the contents of the windows clipboard (ctrl-v). Now all you have to do is use the crop tool to remove the extra stuff and convert it to B&W (or leave it color…).

The problem with this method is that it does not capture the line weights. Now I forget how R14 worked but if you can do a print preview that shows line weights I would perform the screen grab from there.

The second way to make a jpeg in R14 is to create a Post Script printer definition and “print to file” using it. This will output an EPS (Encapsulated Post Script) file that is vector-based so you can still scale it without degradation in Illustrator or Photoshop. I forget exactly how to add plotters in R14 so someone else may be able to help you better here but essentially you need to add an Adobe plotter that outputs PostScript Level 1 and set it to “Print To File.”

As for Excel, unless you are using Acad 2004/2005 in Windows XP forget about it… it can be a time consuming nightmare especially with large Excel files. In any case, the method of inserting Excel (or Word) files is called OLE (Object Linking and Embedding). On the Insert pulldown choose OLE object and it will give you the option of creating a new object or inserting an existing one. You also get the option of linking the object with in Acad terms means the same as Xref. The problems with OLE Excel objects is that there are limitations on the number of cells wide and high you insert (technically Windows inserts a picture of the spreadsheet, not the actual spreadsheet). I forget the exact number of cells but I have ended up breaking large spreadsheets into many smaller ones to get it all to work.

The next hurdle is that I don’t think spreadsheets can be rotated at the plotter. This means that if you have a 36” wide plotter and are trying to print an E-Sized sheet that needs to be rotated vertically because of its width the drawing will be correct but the spreadsheet will come out 90 degrees from the position you want it.

I mentioned Windows XP back there a bit. I don’t have it so I have not tried this but I have been told that some of the OLE limitations have been overcome with this OS. If someone knows for sure I would like to hear it.

Definitely use the Post Script Printer method like Dave Rizzolo just described- It's easy to set up and gives great results. There's a transparent background too, so you can overlap images and colors in Photoshop.
Another good method, which may be even easier to use is to print to a pdf. You can open this in Photoshop and it's great. Check out the free program over at http://www.cutepdf.com/

If you want to save an image of exactly what you are looking at on the screen, go to TOOLS/DISPLAY IMAGE/SAVE and save your display as a tiff file. From that, you can convert (reduce/compress) the file type and size to whatever you want.

wow thank you for all your responses. i really appreciate it

I second the EPS option. No doubt.

For acad 2000: Tools>Options>Plotting>Add or configure plotters.
I think that in the 14 v. the plotting options were under File--if I remember correctly.

I do normally use the Level 2 plotter however ... but not really know whether this is best nor why it would be best.

I mentioned Level 1 EPS because the last time I set this up I used a Level 2 and was not able to open the resulting EPS in Photoshop.

The best way to create a door schedule is to have smart door symbols from which you can extract the attribute information and then insert the information into a new block with all the same attributes, but instead of a symbol the new one is a door schedule block.

That way each line of a door schedule is a block with attributes, where the door symbol is a block but holds the attribute information for that door. One looks like a door symbol, the other looks like a lilne of text, but both are blocks. The best thing about the info being attributes is that it can be edited globaly in mere seconds.

You can then have a LISP or VBA code to automate this for you and cut down the time necessary to make door schedules.

As far as exporting from Autocad:
on 14 use export eps or wmf are good enoug
on 2004 jpgout or print to jpg

Thanks for the advice Dave and Ex-Army Dude. I am not sure what LISP and VBA are though.

Sorry if I sound like a newbie but I'm a first year arch student working in an arch firm.