I absolutely love the PDF import functionality in Microstation U17!
There are quite a few improvements possible that would really make it an even better product. I can only hope they are already on the agenda (maybe for U18 when it's no longer a Technology Preview?):
Import layers from the PDF to Levels in the DGN file;
Better conversion of line weight- and colour
Recognition of colinear dashed lines into a line style
Text conversion. Works sometimes, but not always. Maybe it has something to do with fonts? If so, is there any method of importing the font from the PDF to DGN?
Add option to use annotation scale on imported text so that text scales when the drawing is scaled => On import the text size must be matched so that the displayed text is OK in the current annotation scale.
I also love the functionality to import a pdf, but it should also be available in OCM.
Until now I use FME to convert a pdf to dgn because FME has the possibility to use levels and colors. In MS everything is Default and color 0.
Textitems are better in MS!
Import layers from the PDF to Levels in the DGN file is possible with FME (by Safe Software). If MicroStation would be able to do this, the user can replace an FME license by an MicroStation license.
This is a really important feature in my opinion, that will be greatly enabled by LLM and Generative AI integration into MicroStation. Development milestones I would like to see are:
- Vectorized PDF support for all MicroStation element types. Fully useful graphical DGN files from a pdf.
- Rasterized PDF support for all MicroStation element types. Scan any drawing and convert to a fully useful graphical DGN file.
Most of the world's documents on infrastructure design are stored on paper or rasterized pdfs. This dwarfs all of the worlds vectorized pdfs by a large margin!