AutoCAD text with Width Factor other than 1, cannot find and replace in PDF in Bluebeam?

Question

Regarding drawings plotted to PDF from AutoCAD. It appears that although we can successfully find specified text in the PDF with Bluebeam, it cannot be replaced if the Width Factor in AutoCAD is anything other 1. Anyone else run into this? Anything we're missing or tricks to make it work?

Thanks.

Josh Gebelein · Answer

Try flattening everything first in the pdf file then running OCR.  Often CAD text will come in as a markup noted 'SHX' type.  OCR won't pick up something that isn't flattened.  Will be interested to hear if that continues to be an issue.

mk3024 · Answer

Thanks all for the responses so far. Trouble is we may not always have the original DWG files available. Hope was to be able to easily batch sets of PDFs and find/replace certain text. But we noticed that some text is skipped and after testing, that appears to be due to width factor. When we do have the original DWG files of course we can make changes there as necessary. OCR didn't seem to help in the test file I tried, but I'll read more about it.

Dan Phillips · Answer

Actually, it doesn't seem to matter if it's an SHX or TrueType font. Once you've changed the text width in AutoCAD, Bluebeam can no longer fully edit the text. While Bluebeam recognizes narrowed fonts as text, they show up as greyed out during editing. (Oddly, it still tries to spellcheck them)

I've just avoided using the text width in AutoCAD unless its unavoidable. Another option would be to choose a TrueType font that is naturally narrower. Many TTFs come in a narrow variety as well.