We deliver mostly PDFs, and the majority of our customers work from printed
(via laser printer, not press) PDFs, not the electronic file. We only use Visio
for flowcharts and schematic diagrams -- just the simple line stuff. Almost
all of our technical drawings are sourced in CorelDRAW 12, and somehow the way
FM
handles the imported hi-res TIF, the resized graphics in FM don't seem to lose
anything detectable. We originally tried to use EPS, but we had so many
problems trying to get the EPS exported from Visio or from DRAW that our team
began using TIF, because it seemed to be the only export filter that was
working rather reliably and importing rather reliably no matter where we
sourced (in DRAW, Visio, AI, CPT, FullShot, SnagIt, etc.) or used the graphic
(typically in FM, but often output via WWP or PDF, and sometimes sourced in
Word or DRAW).
But, we aren't sending the books to a professional press operation. This may be
why we can "get away with" doing it this way. I'll definitely recheck some of
the Visio drawings in the end-user PDF, though.
We use several graphics management plugins to handle bulk resize, shrinkwrap,
or scale operations, so it gets problematic if we have a ton of white space
around a graphic. One thing we like about TIF over PDF is that we don't have a
lot of white space to hide with the anchored frame, so the shrinkwrap or scale
bulk operations don't hose up the pagination.
Of course, I solicit "best practice" information from all parties on this list,
so please don't hesitate to tell me where we're screwing up. ;-)
Rene L. Stephenson
----- Original Message ----
From: "Combs, Richard" <richard.co...@polycom.com>
Rene Stephenson wrote:
> I've been successfully exporting TIF files from Visio and just
importing
> that into FM by reference.
If you're delivering only printed docs and use a sufficiently high
resolution for your TIFFs, it may work OK. But if you deliver PDFs, you
might want to check the diagrams in the PDFs at some
higher-magnification zoom settings.
Richard
