PDF Files
PDF is how dielines travel between packaging designers, printers and die makers. Import one with File › Import › Import…, and save one with File › Export › Export…, choosing PDF Files. The same rules apply to EPS and PostScript and Adobe Illustrator files.
Several pages
A drawing with several pages can be written as one PDF: in the export options, Pages is The page
worked on, All pages, or Pages … and the ones you want: their numbers in the drawing's order, from 1, and
runs of them (1-3, 5; 4- for 4 to the last; 3-1 backwards). Each is a page of the PDF, in that order, named after
it (viewers show its name in place of its number), and fitted to the page size on its own. The layers are shared by
all of them.
Import
ParametrIQ CAD reads one page (the first, unless you choose another with Page in the import options): its lines and curves, text and placed images. Switch off Text, Raster images or Line widths to leave them out, or switch on Dielines only to bring in only what goes on a die-making layer, leaving the artwork out.
Which layer each line goes on
Packaging artwork usually marks the dieline with a spot colour or a layer named for it. Each path goes on:
- the die-making layer its spot colour is named for, then the one its layer is named for;
- otherwise a layer of its own, named after its spot colour, or its layer in the file;
- otherwise, for a plain stroke in the colour of a die-making layer (the same hue, or for greys the same lightness), that layer;
- otherwise the Artwork layer, or, with A layer for each artwork colour in the import options, a layer for each colour.
The names are recognised in several languages and spellings. A name only has to contain the words, so Die Line 2pt, CutContour and CREASE_1 all count:
| Names like | Go on |
|---|---|
| cut, die, dieline, die cut, cut contour, thru cut, stanz, schnitt, découpe, troquel, fustella … | Cut |
| crease, score, fold, rill, rillen, falz, rainage, pli … | Crease |
| cut crease, cut and score, perf crease | Cut Crease |
| reverse crease, counter crease, reverse score, gegenrill | Reverse Crease |
| partial cut, kiss cut, half cut, ritz | Partial Cut |
| perforation, perf, tear, zipper, perforierung | Perforation |
| v cut, v groove | V-Cut |
| glue, adhesive, tape, kleber, leim, colle | Tape |
| dimension, measure, annotation, bemaßung | Dimension |
Your layer table's own names count too, in whatever language you have given them.
What else comes across
- Curves: Illustrator and most other programs draw arcs and circles as Béziers. Béziers that are really straight lines or circular arcs (within the Arc fitting tolerance, 0.01 mm unless you give another) come in as lines and arcs, and a circle drawn in four quarters as one circle, so they can be dimensioned and cut.
- Stroke widths become line widths.
- Colours: a layer made from a spot colour or a process colour keeps it as its print colour (CMYK, grey or RGB).
- Text comes in as text in its font, at its size, where the file has real text rather than outlines.
- Images come in as raster images (JPEG kept as it is). Images in formats that can't be read (JPEG 2000, fax encodings) are left out, or come in as rectangles where they were with Frames of unreadable images.
- Clipping paths are applied: lines and curves are cut where they cross the clip and the parts outside are left out, fills are cut to the area they share with it, and text and images are kept whole if they reach into it, left out if not. Clips set inside other clips are cut by both, and a clip round everything (the page, say) changes nothing. The messages after the import say how many items were cut or left out.
Export
The PDF is a single page (or a page for each of the drawing's pages chosen, above) the size of the drawing, with a margin of a quarter of an inch (18 pt), or on the page size you choose in the export options (see File Formats). The title is the file's name unless you give another, and the file is compressed unless you switch Compress off.
- Each layer is a PDF layer (an Acrobat and Illustrator layer you can show and hide), in the layer table's order.
- The die-making layers are spot colours named after the layer (Cut, Crease …), set to overprint, so a printer can separate the dieline from the artwork (unless Dielines as spot colours is off). Other layers are written in their print colours.
- Line widths are kept; lines without one are 0.5 pt (the Default line width).
- Text is written as text in the standard PDF fonts (Helvetica unless a TrueType font is chosen, then the nearest standard font), or as the outlines of its letters with Text as outlines.
- Images are embedded. An image distorted in perspective is written as the parallelogram of three of its corners, as PDF can only place images by a matrix.
- Dimensions are written as their lines and the outlines of their text.
- Magnifiers: what a magnifier's callout shows is cut to the callout with a clipping path, each piece still on its own layer.