ACI Sketch

[Greg Hyland]

When I send the files via email with Adobe , the sketches come out at the clients in a very small drawing.
When I open my sent email, the sketch is also very small on that page.
I belive when Adobe is "condensing" the file, for some reason it does not send in that original size.
Any ideas or suggestions?
Some clients call and ask for me to fax original size, others do not call about it.
Thanks,

GREG

 

[Tim The Enchanter]

ACI sketch? Do you use Apex? or one of the others? I've noticed that sometimes Apex will resize the drawing when you close the program and go back to ACI. Looking at the sketch page in ACI it looks blank. Reopen Apex, and youcan see the sketch shrunk to postage stamp size. Hitting control + R lets you resize it to 1 to 15 or whichever, and fixes that problem.

I know this doesn't sound like the same problem, but other than that all I can think of is call tech support. Good luck.

 

[Ross (CO)]

Greg, ......I have never had a client come back with question about sketch size or scale concerns via electronic dispatch of reports. Nor have I explored Lee's suggested Control / R method of amendment. But, I must ask, with what version of ACI are you working ? I still use their 8.1.2 loaded in March of '02. Do you have the newest 8.5 version now ? If so, perhaps you, or any other 8.5-version users, could share their direct positive and/or perhaps negative experiences with the new version. There can sure be so much hype about "new" versions of software and then when one gets it he sees that it's really so much the same as the previous version. Where's the new and improved ? They still carry forward some basic operational and form-field inadequacies and quirks which have been there for at least 5 years now.....and remain within any new version. At least one knows when to expect their occurance, and one can compensate during report writing to skip around them. -----Back to sketching, I do use the APEX IV program and think it to be best. One very important trick I learned was to do File-Save frequently, and then to do File-Exit with at least the completion of each level of the home sketch. Send that completed stuff back into the report file .....and then re-open Apex to sketch more. Can't tell you how many times I had sketched quickly, clicking and drawing hastily......only to out-click the ability of program to absorb what I was doing and BINGO....a fatal error message forcing shut-down....and the likelihood that I might have to start sketching all over again. I especially hate that when it's 10pm at night and the sketch was the last thing I was going to complete before bedtime. Argghh!

 

[Dave Smith]

To quote Ross:

Do you have the newest 8.5 version now ? If so, perhaps you, or any other 8.5-version users, could share their direct positive and/or perhaps negative experiences with the new version. There can sure be so much hype about "new" versions of software and then when one gets it he sees that it's really so much the same as the previous version. Where's the new and improved ? They still carry forward some basic operational and form-field inadequacies and quirks which have been there for at least 5 years now.....and remain within any new version. At least one knows when to expect their occurrence, and one can compensate during report writing to skip around them.

Ross, I have installed the official street version of V85 and had been using the beta version, or versions of V8.5 for about six months. So far the official version is running like a top. It is well behaved and there are improvements, albeit minor ones, in a number of area.

You said

They still carry forward some basic operational and form-field inadequacies and quirks which have been there for at least 5 years now.....and remain within any new version. At least one knows when to expect their occurrence, and one can compensate during report writing to skip around them.

I got involved as an ACI beta tester in part because I started feeding the staff at ACI some of the bugs I was finding and offered to work with them is solving the well known problem of addendum crashed. I have asked on this forum for suggestions and requests for improvements but have not gotten many.

As moderator of this forum I am willing to send suggestions to ACI, whether related to "quirks" or "inadequacies" found by forumites. I can't make any guarantees that specific items will be changed but the staff at ACI has been responsive to my input in the past.

In other words, folks, if you critique the software here the information will become known to the ACI staff. So how about it? Who wants to go first?

 

[sos]

Greg:

Go to control panel and open printers & faxes, right click on Adobe and go to properties, click printing preferences, make sure paper size is set to legal you might also have to change the resolution to 300dpi. This should correct the sketch size

Good luck

Jay Sosna

 

[Greg Hyland]

Thanks for all the input, it is greatly appreciated!
I tried the mentioned solutions, unfortunately, none of them worked.
I guess to clarify....
I use ACI 7.3 and APEX IV.
Also, the sketch is drawn at "normal" size. When I go back into ACI, the sketch page is drawn at "normal" size. The size of sketch doesnt change until I send it through email via Adobe. Then it is about 2 inches in size and in the upper left hand corner of the sketch page. Can't read any dimensions or room labels.

Thanks again...

GREG

 

[Justin Czerniak]

I am using Apex and ACI, and have the same issue of the sketch resizing when adding it from Apex to ACI.

This is what I did to get around it.
1. When I made a new sketch I went to draw area and chose non-calculated area
Then go to properties and chose the color white, click ok.
2. Chose non-calculated area and draw a triangle then deleted the measurement numbers so you still have a white page
3. On the first page I add the words in 36pt font "Sketch starts on page two
4. Add the second page to your sketch. And draw like normal I use 10-15 depending on the size of the subject. With a 12 pt. font for labels.

That is it.
What this did was allow you to have a second page for a sketch with blank first page for the measurements without the ACI program crashing.
ACI will still shrink the sketch but all the measurements are on page 1 and the sketch is on page 2 but you will be able to see it better.

hope this helps.