inserting image in drawing/sheet format

Try a bitmap. As I recall, JPEGs don't work in drawings, but bitmaps (.BMP) do.

thanks, that helped. i wasn't paying attention to the bmp specificly. i got the image to show up, but it wants to be over the top of anything I draw. Why the image wouldn't default to the background is very weird. In a cad program, I can't fathom why would anyone want the image in the foreground. I suppose swx wanted to impede productivity as much as possible.

bill

You would probably find it easier and take up less memory if you do the following:

1. Save the picture you want to trace in full scale as a jpg.
2. Insert a sketch on the plane you want to trace your picture
3. Tools-Sketch Tools-Sketch Picture
4. Close the sketch
5. Create a new sketch on the same plane and do all your tracing in the second sketch.

You will find this takes up less memory, updates faster, and gives you some control over the scale of the picture you just inserted with the Sketch Picture command.

I don't want to trace, but rather have the image itself visible and printable in a drawing. Sketching (and annotations) would be done within drawing view. Can sortof do this now, but image stays on top. I've found some old posts discussing this in the past, usually for the purpose of having watermarks behind drawing views (functionally the same thing). I am amazed that a cad developer would have this image thing so backward. With the image on top, I can't really see what would be the purpose. Has swx ever talked to any actual cad operators?

bill

I am not able to get a transparent gif to show up "transparent" in sketch picture.

did you know you can send the BMP to the back (sw2005 sp4.0)

I have not had any problems just cutting and pasting images into a drawing. I don't remember what the original format was, but I am certain that it wasn't a BMP.