TIP 92: Measuring Objects
Acrobat 7 Professional includes several tools you can use to measure the distance and area of objects in a PDF drawing. You most often use these tools with CAD drawings or with documents being sent to a printer.
Where Did It Go?
A measurement is an elusive thing. Unless you specify the measurement as a comment, the object you draw will disappear when you start another measurement or select another tool. You can define the measurement as a comment by clicking the Measurement Markup option in the dialog. When you type text in the Annotation field, it is shown as a comment when the measurement is complete, as shown in Chapter 14.
Figure 92b. The values of the measured area are shown in this dialog; change the scale to match your drawing. You can also assign a note to the measurement, as shown here.
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Open the Measuring toolbar by choosing Tools > Measuring > Show Measuring Toolbar (Figure 92a). Of course you can select an individual tool from the menu, but my strong preference is to open any toolbar I am working with to save time. You can also right-click or Control-click the toolbar well at the top of the program window and click Measuring.
Figure 92a. Open the Measuring toolbar for convenience. The toolbar contains three tools, used to measure distance, perimeter, and area.
Each tool measures in a different way: Click the Distance tool to measure the distance between two points by clicking the location for the first point and then dragging to the second point and clicking the mouse again. Click the Perimeter tool to measure the distance between several points. Click each point you want to measure and then double-click the last point to finish the measurement. Click the Area tool to measure the area within line segments. With the tool, click each point you want to measure and then click the first point again to complete the measurement area.
Note To stop the drawing process before completing a shape, press the Esc key on your keyboard or select another tool from the toolbars. To constrain the segments to straight lines as you draw, hold the Shift key as you drag and click the mouse. When you click a measuring tool, the Distance/Perimeter/Area Tool dialog opens. The name of the dialog depends on the chosen tool (Figure 92b). After you have completed measuring with one of the three tools, the values appear in the dialog.
Viewing Metadata
Visio and AutoCAD drawings may have metadata embedded in them. These elements are custom information added in the source program which is then included with the converted PDF document. To view custom metadata from a CAD application, choose Tools > Object Data > Object Data Tool . Your pointer changes to crosshairs when you mouse over an object containing metadata; click to select the object and the Object Data dialog opens. The contents of the embedded data are shown in the dialog. Click the Options button in the dialog to view a list of actions you can take, such as zooming to the selected object, counting similar objects, or copying the content to the clipboard. |
Many times drawings are constructed to scale, which you can set in the dialog by typing the ratio values in the fields and choosing a unit of measurement from the pull-down lists. |
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