In Corel

[Bert Kemp]

How do you open a multi page PDF so that all the pages are on a separate page. I've tried both options and all the pages open in 1 page all bundled together Thank in advance

[Ralph Undis]

Works correctly in Coreldraw 2019

[John Lifer]

X7 gives me that option when I IMPORT a pdf.

[Bert Kemp]

i have x5 ......................................

[Kev Williams]

I feel your pain Bert... I think it depends on who/how the pdf was made. Last night I tried to open a multi-page pdf, I got a 'corrupted file' error... Just now I found a 2-page blueprint, and it opened fine, using 2 pages, in Corel X4.

There's also a lot of anti-piracy crap going on with technical software these days that makes life hell for guys like us. As in:

The blueprint I just opened, on page 2, I added pricing to the print and saved it:
442641

This is what I got when I opened it just now for this test--
442642
Bunch of Chinese gobbledygook! And this is a PDF I saved and I added text to on MY computer !?
If I just open the PDF in a reader it's fine, the anti-piracy crap comes into play when importing it into another program...
--This could be why you're having trouble getting into your Corel correctly...

I've been dealing with this crap for about a year now, these greedy software companies, the programs my customers use to create blueprints and technical drawings, want ME to buy THEIR software in order to for ME to do the job my customer wants me to do! And it's not ME that's pissed off, some of my customers are REALLLYYYY pissed off because their software gets automatically upgraded, and now they can't figure out how to get ME workable artwork! And it wouldn't be so bad for a 3rd party like me to pay them a fair, ONE TIME price for a text de-scrambler, but nope, they want a full-blown never-ending subscription for a product I have no other use for except to make English print in English.... It's ridiculously greedy HORSE ...
I wasted all my profit on a $300 job yesterday hand-typing numbers on dials that look like this in PDF:
442643
but import into Corel like THIS:
442644
Since my customer has no alternative way (that they can find) to get me art with text,
I have to hand type and position the all the numbers and text manually from a screeshot
of the dial. This adds 8-10 minutes to each dial, and every dial is unique. 6 dials adds an hour,
I just got making 11 dials earlier today.
ARRGGHH!!!
:mad: http://www.engraver1.com/gifs/banghead.gif http://www.engraver1.com/gifs/pullinghair.gifhttp://www.engraver1.com/gifs/nilly.gif

[Chris DeGerolamo]

Hey Kev, try this: Open the PDF and print it to a [new] PDF and don't embed the fonts. This process works well for me; by converting the fonts to lines/splines, you should have zero font mapping issues and get your profit margin back on track. Good luck. /hijack

[Ralph Undis]

In my working past, I used 7 different CAD programs, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and Acrobat Professional. Not counting any of the Microsoft business programs. It's the cost of doing business efficiently. In order to translate files in the most efficient manner, it's always better to match the software your main customers have to reduce translation issues.

I understand where you are coming from, but using an old version of Corel and expecting it to translate CAD and graphic files correctly is not cost effective. I currently have Draftsight CAD, and export DXF to import into Coreldraw 2019. Corel messes up arcs that turn more than 90 degrees in CAD. Not all of them, but enough to make me first import the DXF into Lightburn, and then output an SVG and import that into Coreldraw.

I am surely not a fan of all the different programs, but I was responsible for translating data from different systems into CAD. I was way more productive when the company I worked for purchased AutoCAD and Adobe Illustrator. 80% of the files we received were DWG / DXF out of AutoCAD and AI files from Illustrator. It's where I acquired my AutoCAD and Illustrator skills. I delved into both programs, and was able to automate some of the processes of exporting files out of each program.

I worked translating files for 20 years in steel rule die shops and 15 years in folding carton manufacturing, When I first started using CAD in 1981, there were no translations available in what we were using. It wasn't until 1985, when we had an IGES translator written to import flexible dashboard circuits. Prior to that, it was all input from blueprints. One of the reasons my first company was so successful is that we didn't force our customers to translate their files like our competitors. Our competitive advantage besides pricing was to have the customer provide us files in the format they worked in, and we took care of the rest.

Just my 2 cents.

[Bert Kemp]

Well hope you get that figured out Kev. Guess theres no help for me:mad:

[Mike Null]

Bert

Misery loves company. My X5/Win 7 Pro does not play well with Adobe so I've switched to Foxit which is a free pdf reader. I still have the problem that's bugging you but at least I can handle all other PDF functions. I open one page at a time.

[Glen Monaghan]

I've been dealing with this crap for about a year now, these greedy software companies, the programs my customers use to create blueprints and technical drawings, want ME to buy THEIR software in order to for ME to do the job my customer wants me to do! And it's not ME that's pissed off, some of my customers are REALLLYYYY mad because their software gets automatically upgraded, and now they can't figure out how to get ME workable artwork! And it wouldn't be so bad for a 3rd party like me to pay them a fair, ONE TIME price for a text de-scrambler, but nope, they want a full-blown never-ending subscription for a product I have no other use for except to make English print in English.... It's ridiculously greedy...
I wasted all my profit on a $300 job yesterday hand-typing numbers on dials that look like this in PDF:
442643
but import into Corel like THIS:
442644
Since my customer has no alternative way (that they can find) to get me art with text,
I have to hand type and position the all the numbers and text manually from a screeshot
of the dial.

Kev,

After a quick comparison of the two dials, it occured to me that the only difference is a single flipped bit. If you look at an ASCII character chart, each character is represented by a unique 2 digit hexadecimal number and you will find that a space character is 20 (hexadecimal), the numerals 0-9 are 30-39, and upper case letters A-Z are 41-5A. These days, Unicode is used to represent the greatly extended international character sets, so each character is a unique 4 digit hexadecimal number (UTF 16, but there is also 8 bit UTF 8 code). Unicode 16 just just tacks on an extra 2 zeros at the front of the legacy ASCII set (space character is 0020, zero is 0030, etc.). If you look at your second dial, what should be CUTOUT is ⁃⁕⁔⁏⁕⁔ so, if you use that as your Rosetta stone into the Unicode chart, you'll quickly discover that those characters appear to be 2000+ASCII, that is, UTF16 space character 0020 has become 2020, 0-9's 0030-0039 have become 2030-2039, A-Z's 0041-005A have become 2041-205A, etc.

Maybe a coreldraw macro could be written to locate all text objects, parse through each character of each text object, and either subract 2000 hexadecimal or logically AND with DFFF hexadecimal to flip that errant bit back to 0 so 2030 goes back to 0030, etc. Or maybe there is an online converter that will do it.

[Bill George]

Or tell the customer I can only take DXF or whatever standard format files, or they can supply files I can take. Or pay me to convert. All depends on what your time is worth.

[Bert Kemp]

Mike can you open 1 page at a time in corel or just as a PDF. I've never had any trouble with PDF's in general just when I import in to corel that I have problems.
Bert

Misery loves company. My X5/Win 7 Pro does not play well with Adobe so I've switched to Foxit which is a free pdf reader. I still have the problem that's bugging you but at least I can handle all other PDF functions. I open one page at a time.

[Tony Lenkic]

Bert,

The way I go about importing PDF in to Corel is drag and drop.

Lets say you have a PDF with 5 pages. Save file on desk top.
I open Corel as new blank page. Than I make total of 5 pages by clicking on "+" in page order.
Now I would ninimize Corel view so I can locate PDF on desk top.
Click on the file and drag and drop each page individually on Corel pages.
It sound like long process but when doing it goes quick.

[Bert Kemp]

this does not work for me. I can't drag pages form the PDF into corel. When I clic on a page of the pdf nothing happens. I drag a fist to corel nothing is attachec :mad::confused:
Bert,

The way I go about importing PDF in to Corel is drag and drop.

Lets say you have a PDF with 5 pages. Save file on desk top.
I open Corel as new blank page. Than I make total of 5 pages by clicking on "+" in page order.
Now I would ninimize Corel view so I can locate PDF on desk top.
Click on the file and drag and drop each page individually on Corel pages.
It sound like long process but when doing it goes quick.

[Mike Null]

Bert
I fooled around with it this morning and found that specifying "PDF" as the file type worked.

[Bert Kemp]

LOL I was fooling around to and I opened corel and tried Importing a PDF and low and behold all page's opened in a separate page.Don't know why I never tried that before. I hope other here try it see if it works for you .

[Kev Williams]

Hey Kev, try this: Open the PDF and print it to a [new] PDF and don't embed the fonts. This process works well for me; by converting the fonts to lines/splines, you should have zero font mapping issues and get your profit margin back on track. Good luck. /hijack

That used to work, doesn't now. Regardless if I import curves instead of text, I get garbage. Not the SAME garbage, but still garbage...
On the left is 'text' garbage (as in my above post, on the right is 'curves' garbage...
442731442732

And I MUST be able to import text in order to avoid hand typing and the typo's that come with it ;)

Mike, I've also switched to Foxit, right after I PAID for Adobe (which would never load, and most times would freeze the whole computer...)

I DO know this much, it's NOT the PDF reader programs causing this, it's programs like SolidWorks and some others that are scrambling text specifically so non-paying 3rd parties like us can't use files their customers send us... :mad:

[Kev Williams]

Kev,

After a quick comparison of the two dials, it occured to me that the only difference is a single flipped bit. If you look at an ASCII character chart, each character is represented by a unique 2 digit hexadecimal number and you will find that a space character is 20 (hexadecimal), the numerals 0-9 are 30-39, and upper case letters A-Z are 41-5A. These days, Unicode is used to represent the greatly extended international character sets, so each character is a unique 4 digit hexadecimal number (UTF 16, but there is also 8 bit UTF 8 code). Unicode 16 just just tacks on an extra 2 zeros at the front of the legacy ASCII set (space character is 0020, zero is 0030, etc.). If you look at your second dial, what should be CUTOUT is ⁃⁕⁔⁏⁕⁔ so, if you use that as your Rosetta stone into the Unicode chart, you'll quickly discover that those characters appear to be 2000+ASCII, that is, UTF16 space character 0020 has become 2020, 0-9's 0030-0039 have become 2030-2039, A-Z's 0041-005A have become 2041-205A, etc.

Maybe a coreldraw macro could be written to locate all text objects, parse through each character of each text object, and either subract 2000 hexadecimal or logically AND with DFFF hexadecimal to flip that errant bit back to 0 so 2030 goes back to 0030, etc. Or maybe there is an online converter that will do it.


I appreciate you're checking into this :) - Because I can change the font, and/or edit the garbage into actual letters, I've assumed it's just some sort of easy font code manipulation- much the same as Little Orphan Annie's decoder ring :D

I did some research on this problem, and the one source I found explained basically what you're saying, but the problem is, as I understand it, is that the code manipulation is random, and explained that if you could figure out the code with file A, file B would have a different code. The very dials above are proof of this, because one of my customers engineers figured out the 'crack'. Worked great on all the common files of the LAST job, so the buyer used the same crack on this last order, and no worky this time. My "ski lift 1" company fought this problem at the beginning of the year, affected both DXF and PDF files. Was a pain all around; the DXF's would import graphics just fine, but NO text at all would come in. Ironically, the PDF versions came in with perfect text, but the graphics were scrambled up. I had to superimpose each file, separate them, then delete the trash from both files and combine what was left! It took them about 3 months to figure it out on their end. Not sure what they did but I'm getting wonderful DXF's from them now, with ALL extraneous text, lines & dimensions removed. Easiest prints I've ever had to work with :)