Replace an image?

[ron.sanpedro]

I am trying to find a graceful way to get the 10 plus stamps in use in the office into our title blocks, without manually drawing every one, and without creating 10 different title blocks, with only the stamp being different. My original thought was to scan all the stamps as PNG images, then make 10 Generic Annotation families, one for each stamp. The title block would contain a placeholder stamp family, and at the beginning of a project the user would simply Right Click/Reload and pick the stamp family they really wanted. All well and good, except for the bug where an image in a generic annotation that is then placed in a title block will not be visible when the title block is in use. Nice bug, that!
Anyway, it seems my only alternative is to have the stamp as an image file in the title block, and then control visibility by changing the size, because there is ANOTHER bug, where visibility of an image in a title block is broken.
The recommendation from Autodesk is to actually DRAW the stamp, which I am loath to do for two reasons. One, I have 10 of them to do! And two, I would prefer to keep the appearance of a traditional stamp. Some jurisdictions are still leery of digital stamps, and for now I would just as soon have a scanned image. But as far as I can tell, there is no easy way to switch one image for another, and have all the parameter and locked dimension work remain. My workflow is basically for the user to place the image fresh, and do all the parameter and dimension and location work, which is a pain, fraught with potential error, and just plain stupid, if you ask me. In looking at the image properties, I can see where the image came from, but everything is grayed out. Is there really no way to replace one image with another? Perhaps via the API?

Thanks,
Gordon

[sbrown]

I would think a Find and Replace action with the API could easily do this. the images would have to be exactly the same size and dpi but it should be fairly easy. I'd post in theAPI forum and find some programing guru to give it a whirl.

[petervanko]

It would sure be nice to be able to apply visibility parameters to images in a titleblock family...you could set up a new family type for each stamp. Hope to see this in the future...

[ron.sanpedro]

It would sure be nice to be able to apply visibility parameters to images in a titleblock family...you could set up a new family type for each stamp. Hope to see this in the future...

The whole "images in title blocks are useless" issue has been reported as a bug. Hopefully it will get fixed before the next useless Google Earth Plugin is foisted off on us. Yes Autodesk, I am starting to get sick and tired of things not working while marketing **** makes it into the product. Very frustrating couple of weeks in Revit, to be sure.

Gordon

[comhasse]

I am trying to find a graceful way to get the 10 plus stamps in use in the office into our title blocks, without manually drawing every one,...
Have you considered using a raster to vector-conversion software. It seems that would work perfectly for stamps and you could still achieve an "imperfect" look. I've tried the evaluation version of algolab r2v toolkit successfully before. You can import the lines as dxf, then copy them into a filled region in sketch mode.

[sbrown]

We use images in our titleblocks all the time, they work great. What is the issue you have. Sometimes our entire titleblock is a photoshop graphic imported as a jpg.

[dbaldacchino]

I tried doing something similar to what you're doing Gordon. In our case, we used to put the digital seal in the titleblock in Acad and print. Then the drawings would get signed manually. That changed in the recent years and we now take a piece of paper, stamp and sign it and then scan that and put it in the titleblock. Structural has different requirements.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that I see little point in trying to automate a task that takes you under 5 minutes to achieve, per project. My team knows how to scan and all it took is to show them how to edit a titleblock family, insert an image and resize it and load it back in the project. Done...next....

[petervanko]

I agree, David. You will just have to have a different titleblock family for each Architect. Still would be nice to manage each digital stamp with a type parameter...

[cganiere]

We use images in our titleblocks all the time, they work great. What is the issue you have. Sometimes our entire titleblock is a photoshop graphic imported as a jpg.

I know how to place the image, but I want to control visibility for printing. Check sets should not have the architect's stamp visible. I tried nesting the JPG into a generic notation, but I can't control the visibility of the JPG.
:cry:

[dbaldacchino]

You don't....you control the visibility of the Generic Annotation family (this is where you place your image) with a yes/no parameter in the Titleblock family.