DeskPack PowerLayout
3
Expand Structural Design Layer
Choose Window > Esko > Structural Design > Expand Structural Design Layer... .
Select the structural design layer that you want to expand into a new Illustrator layer.
All art on the structural design layer will be copied to the new Illustrator layer. The art on the new layer is no longer tagged as structural design objects. The resulting objects are in the technical structural design inks.
One common use where you would use this tool is when you are interested in creating a clipping path from the bleed outline of the structural design file.
Structural Design Preferences
If you open or place structural design files created by older versions of e.g. ArtiosCAD ( < 7.3), the structural design layer names might be visualized incorrectly. In the picture below, the ß and u in bemaßung are not visualized correctly.
57
3
DeskPack PowerLayout
This happens when the layer name that was saved in the structural design file used a different text encoding than the one that is used to visualize the layer name in Illustrator. As structural design files created by older versions of e.g. ArtiosCAD ( < 7.3) do not contain the used text encoding, the plug-in can only guess which text encoding was used. It will by default take the current language settings.
This should yield the correct result, unless you are for example trying to open a German structural design file on a Chinese system. If this is the case, you can overrule the text encoding in Illustrator > Preferences > Esko > Structural Design Preferences…on MAC or File >
Preferences > Esko > Structural Design Preferences… on PC.
58
From ArtiosCAD file: ARD files written from ArtiosCAD 7.3 onwards will contain the text encoding used for layer names. So for those files, the layer browser in Illustrator will always visualize the structural design layer names correctly, even if you are for example opening a
German text-encoded ARD file on a Chinese system. For ARD files written by older versions of
ArtiosCAD, the plug-in will use your current language settings for text encoding. In most cases it makes sense to click this option.
