Computer question

Question for you computer wizards out there. I'm working on bidding on a small job and was sent an email with a blueprint. As expected to view the thing on the computer screen you have to blow it up to nearly 200% and scroll around. That makes it really difficult to see the actual layout of things as they relate to each other. My problem is it's in Adobe and evetrything but lookig at it it is restricted. Heck it won't even allow me to make a print copy of it. Other than blowing it up on the screen and using a digital camera to take pics of it and then printing them out (which only semi works as I've tried that to at least get a copy of the part I'm bidding on to work off of) what can I do??? So, my actual question here is is there any way to 'force' the program to allow me to print the file, or do anything with it other than look at it one piece at a time??? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.....It does say something about getting 'permission' to be able to print it, etc but says nothing about where said permission can be obtained and the sender has no clue about that part either.....

There is a computer forum on craigslist.com. A lot of computer geeks hang out there and they have answered a lot of my computer questions.

If the sender has the draing in an electonic format(CAD drawing) they may be able to forward a ".dxf" file of it to you. If you have CAD software you should be able to read the ".dxf" file and do whatever you want with it. We a lot of drawings back and forth to Japan this way.

Wayne, I can relate.. The CAD folks have us under their thumbs. I have trouble opening most drawings.. I am unable to spend tens of thousands of dollars, plus annual fees to have all the latest CAD programs.. All I need to do, is to read a few prints per month.

Instead of Adobe Acrobat, I use the Free Foxit Reader (no affiliation with Fox News).

You can have both installed on your machine at the same time if you want.
link to Foxit Reader...

I second that. Foxit is a nice little programme I use it instead of Acrobat.The only gripe I have with it is that it asks you to download the Ask toolbar. (Even if you uncheck the box it still includes it!) which you don't want and should immediately uninstall.

There are CAD viewers available for free, that will allow you to view and print drawings. For instance nnalert has one called Truview...you have to give a name and information, but it is no charge...
nnalert Truview

Using a digital camera to capture screen images?? That's kind of like using White-Out to correct typos on the computer screen. Just hit your "Print Screen" button", and then paste into a blank document in another program (some lap-tops use a different button for the same function).


You can download PDF-XCHANGE to work with .PDF files and it allows many more features then Adobe Acrobat, including converting to .jpgs.

Like this ??? No camera needed . .


<a href="http://s104.photobucket.com/albums/m162/jdemaris/?action=view&current=printscreen1.jpg" target="_blank"> </a>

Try to save it under a different name. You may be able to print from there.

What is your screen resolution set to on your monitor??

right-click anywhere out on the desktop, properties, settings, to see (assuming you're running Windows XP).

If you are down the 800x600 range try boosting it up. It increases the amount of "real estate" you see on your monitor in one page. Depending on your video card, size of monitor, and/or eyesight, many people like it at 1024x768 or 1280x1024.

I like as much real estate as possible, so I keep mine at 1920x1200, but I have a 24" monitor, which is really nice and easy on the eyes...

Also, have you tried setting view, page display, inside Adobe Reader?? It can make a fairly big impact on the ease of viewing. Part of Adobe's pdf file format reason for living is to allow content producers to lock down their content. In other words, if they don't want you to print it, etc, they have a lot of control to limit that.

Alt/prt-screen on your keyboard will take a snapshot of whatever you are looking at on-screen and then you can paste it (ctrl-v) into mspaint or whatever graphics program you want, if you wanted to try and piece together a "big view" and then print it. It would be very clunky, but it would be better than trying to take a pic with a digital camera.


Howard

Tramway guy below has a good answer. Ask the sender to include the viewer application with the drawing. Easy to do and unless you have full acrobat, much better, as it allows editing and annotation on the virtual print, and printing. Jim.

A good reason to use Foxit---via Firefox instead of Internet Explorer. At least I have never gotten the Ask bar when I checked no thanks.

re: "ASK", I noticed that too. It's unfortunate that the FoxIt "team" has chosen to include this bloatware.