Getting the screenshot

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Capture a screenshot of a computer game at a resolution higher than the screen resolution

Hi,

We have a very old CAD drawing program and we have tons of drawing in it. But this program doesnt have any export capability. So the only way to get the drawing out of the comp seems to get the screen shot of that drawing (for archive purposes). My problem is, most of the drawings are very large size like 3000px to 5600px which is far out of my screen bounds. So is there a way to make the third-party applications form size bigger than the screen size? And capture that application with the invisible parts?

Thanks..

Answer 1

If your CAD program happens to have a print function, you could try redirecting the output to a file instead of the printer.

The file generated will contain high resolution image data, or resolution independent vector data, depending on the driver you use.

I would recommend using a PostScript driver, if available, and ensuring the file extension is renamed to 'ps'. There is a good chance you will find an image application that will open it, or you could use Acrobat Distiller.

Answer 2

You might be able to find a machine or video driver which lets you simulate a larger screen resolution than your monitor; I've seen it before and the Wikipedia article on Display Resolution says:

"When a computer display resolution is set higher than the physical screen resolution, some video drivers make the virtual screen scrollable over the physical screen."

But at that point, why not just print your diagrams and scan the prints? Then you have a physical backup as well as a virtual one.

All that said, capturing CAD files as bitmaps seems suboptimal. If this work has enough value to care about archiving, it probably has enough value to make a converter.

If the company that made your CAD program is defunct you can try looking up the developers and see if they would mind giving you some information about the file format. Or maybe it's easy to reverse engineer--especially if you have the tool and can make new drawing samples to show some base cases (a file containing a single line, for instance).

Answer 3

There is a commercial tool called SnagIt that can do screen-capture with scrolling. Inexpensive and very easy to use. Try it from http://www.techsmith.com/download/snagittrial.asp

[I am not affiliated with them, only a happy user]

Answer 4

What's the file extension? Another program might be able to import it and convert it to a more common format. For example, Inkscape imports a bunch of different file types.