Topic Title

Sometime ago someone suggested using Cool PDF Reader, which will read a pdf then allow you to save as an .emf file. The .emf (metafile) can be inserted into DataCAD and edited, but only, if the pdf is vector based. But if it is bitmap based then follow the instructions from others.

Cool PDF Reader is free from:

http://www.pdf2exe.com/reader.html

You can also convert the pdf to a jpg file and insert the jpg into Datacad. I have used PDFill for various things, including converting pdf's to jpg's. The best part of PDFill is that it is free.

Here's the link: http://www.pdfill.com/

Thank you all for this information, I shall sift through it and apply what I can.
John T.

I don't know if there is a better "FREE" PDF to DWG or (better yet) PDF to vector program out there, but I have just started using PDF to Vector v2.0 from

or if you want polylines.

See all of the downloads (including DWG to image) at:


The download is free and to the best of my knowledge, does not expire.

Basically this is a cmd line prompt program, but you can just rename your pdf file and place it within the folder you unzip the program.
I edited the test.bat file (right click and pick "edit") to limit the output to emf files only. (read the readme file)
PDF to Vector Converter (PDF2Vector) converts Acrobat PDF files into following file formats.
WMF Windows Metafile
EMF Microsoft Enhanced Metafile (32-bit)
PS Adobe PostScript file
EPS Adobe Encapsulated PostScript
SVG Scalable Vector Graphics
SWF Macromedia Flash File Format
XPS Microsoft XML Paper Specification
HPGL HP-GL plotter language
PCL HP Page Control Language, Printer Command Language Format (PCL)
PDF Acrobat PDF file, convert general PDF to Vector PDF

Open DataCAD and use the insert - Metafile - command. Place and resize as necessary (enlarge - cal dist)
The results were a converted pdf into actual lines, to scale and it even recognized much of the text as text.
This turned out to be much faster than tracing.

This is great, but is there another FREE program that is easier?