August 29, 2012

Bitonal Images in AutoCAD 2013

Many of our customers, especially those using Civil 3D, use bitonal images in their AutoCAD drawing. In a recent support case submitted to Ideate, Inc. these images were not appearing correctly in 2013. The foreground and background are reversed, effectively displaying the image in reverse. This has been identified as a bug by Autodesk, and is, as of the writing of this post, not resolved. It can cause a large headache for our customers so we wanted to alert those that we could to the issue before you decide to upgrade your files to 2013.

It affects only images in the bitmap format (.bmp). It will affect both existing images and any newly inserted images.

The current workarounds are to:
  • Use an image format of ‘tagged image file format’ (.tif) or ‘portable network graphics’ (.png).
  • Use the Raster Design software to inverse the image (command IINVERT).
  • Use an image editor to invert the bitmap image.
The third option may cause additional work if the bug is resolved as they will then reverse again.



Jesika DiGregorio
Ideate Technical Support Specialist

Jesika received her Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon where she worked on construction of a student-designed structure. Her work experience includes Junior Designer at an award-winning firm specializing in architecture and land planning, and Intern Architect at a firm that provides services in planning, design, construction documents and construction administration for projects of all sizes. Jesika provides online and phone technical support to Ideate clients from the Ideate Authorized Training Center in Portland, Oregon.

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