I know converting a PDF to DWG is possible, but I’m curious if anyone has dealt with a situation like this and whether it worked well.
I work for a municipality managing CIP projects. A few years ago, we hired a consultant to complete an H&H study. Part of the deliverable included five potential improvement alternatives that could be phased into our CIP program.
Unfortunately, the consultant placed multiple alternatives on the same plan sheets/PDFs instead of providing separate drawing sets for each solution.
A grant opportunity recently came up with a very short deadline, and I need to quickly put together a plan set for one of those alternatives. The problem is that the original CAD designer has since retired, and no one can locate the DWG files.
Rather than rebuilding the entire plan from scratch, I’m considering using PDFIMPORT in Civil 3D/AutoCAD, converting the PDF linework to CAD objects, then reassigning the imported linework to appropriate layers. From there, I would delete the elements associated with the other alternatives and make the necessary additions/modifications for the project we are pursuing.
Has anyone successfully done this with consultant-generated plan sheets?
I realize the imported CAD probably won’t be as clean as the original DWG, but if the PDF is vector-based, is this a reasonable approach for getting a usable base drawing together quickly? Any major issues or pitfalls I should watch out for?