Stardraw.com Announces Public Beta for their Most Popular Feature Ever -- PDF Import

InfoComm 2015 will see the launch of a limited public beta test program for Stardraw.com's most requested feature yet, PDF import. Visitors to the booth will be able preview this exciting new functionality and enroll in the program to test drive it for themselves and, of course, provide invaluable feedback.

According to Stardraw.com CEO, Rob Robinson, the desire for this feature has been growing in recent months and years. "I confess that we've resisted for some time, as our argument has always been that you really don't want to try to work with PDF files. PDF is an 'intermediary' format and the document it represents has always been generated by something else, like AutoCAD, whose file formats we support directly and can edit faithfully. The PDF version, though, has undergone conversion from one object model to another and it's usually been scaled, so its size and content is completely different from the original. This causes significant problems."

"But," he continues, "the fact of the market is that our users are finding it harder and harder to secure the original file formats -- often PDF is all they have -- and so we have committed to developing a superb solution for the majority of cases."

"If I say so myself," he affirms, "what we've developed is simply dynamite! Way better than even our own expectations, so we're truly excited to be previewing it at InfoComm. The reason for the public beta is that while it has been exhaustively tested in house, we need the feedback of our customers in real world situations and a greater sample of documents from more authors in the field to fine-tune the last details and make sure it really delivers everything we expect of it."

In short, the PDF import function allows you to convert any AutoCAD-generated PDF file into an S07 (Stardraw Design 7.1) file, at which point it becomes editable in the same manner, and at the same level of quality, as if it were the source file. "What makes this feature so special, unique even, is the quality of the conversion," explained Robinson. "It is staggeringly good. We convert the PDF's component elements into vector graphics, wherever possible, which means they can be edited in the same way as a DWG file or native vector graphic. The functionality also supports embedded images, e.g. PNG or JPG images that may have been inserted into the PDF. In short, we can now edit the contents of an imported PDF as if they had been created natively in Stardraw Design 7.1."

"This is a genuine game-changer," concludes Robinson. "It's been a thorn in the side of our customers -- indeed anyone that needs to design and document systems -- for a very long time, and no-one to date has been able to deliver a solution until now. To our knowledge, SD7.1 is the only software in the world capable of importing and editing a PDF file in this way. We're anticipating a bit of a stampede at InfoComm once word gets out!"