Wiring diagrams, PDF's and converting drawings - Oh my!
Another part of the package put together for the contractor installing the devices on the projects are wiring diagrams. Wiring Diagrams show how the devices are connected to the fire alarm or security system. Some wiring diagrams are better than others. Most of the brands we use provide the installation instructions with their product in PDF format. Inserting 20 different PDF's into a drawing makes it a large file and slows down the potting process. In order to avoid this I needed a way to convert the PDF drawings into DWG file format WITH OUT having to redraw every single diagram for each device. So I went to my best friend the internet and searched for ways to do this. Then I came across the best conversion site, Cometdocs.com. I normally don't gush about sites but this one was a huge time saver and free!. I was able to upload any non-scanned PDF's and convert them to DWG's, Excel, etc. So now any PDF'd drawings I needed to use as a background could be converted so I could manipulate them and delete what I didn't need. Converting all the wiring diagrams now took a couple of days instead of weeks.