oversized drawings, schematics in book

[rinch at Inficon.com]

Hi Kara,

I use oversize engineering drawings all the time in my Service Manuals. 
Our drafting group sends our drawings in PDF format. I open the PDF in 
Illustrator, rotate and size it as necessary, then scale it down so that 
it is no more than 8.5 inches high (or 5.9 inches wide). Once I've got the 
drawing rotated and sized, I save it as an EPS with a B&W preview.

In FrameMaker, I have set up a rotated whole page 2 cell table. One cell 
holds the Table X_X auto number scheme, so I add the title of the drawing 
to that to get a "Table X-X Title". Into the other cell, I place the EPS 
file of the engineering drawing.

Of course, in FrameMaker it all look horrible because I am only looking at 
the Preview. And, when I print the page, because the engineering drawing 
is now scaled to 8.5" high, often I cannot read the drawings. This is 
especially true of large electrical schematics.

But, when I PDF that FrameMaker page, I get a beautiful vector graphic 
that I can (in a PDF viewer) zoom in on to see even the smallest detail.

Our Service Engineers like having the drawings in the PDF like this. They 
can zoom in a small area and, if they want hardcopy, just print the zoomed 
area (Print Current View) or they can choose a printer that prints large 
paper sizes and select "Fit To Printer Margins" and print the page 
containing the engineering drawing on a page size that's as large as their 
printer will support.

Hope this helps,
Richard