Bitmap Images

A bitmap is a set of pixels arranged in lines and columns and is fully described by its width and height, color depth (bits per pixel) and compression scheme. The common format is true color (24 bits per pixel). An additional color component, called Alpha component, may be used to define the transparency of each pixel.

The bitmap format generally supports compression (either lossless or lossy). Some of these bitmaps are coded on 8 bits and the pixels are indexed on a color table, called the palette.The advantage of bitmap files is that they can reproduce complex scenes (for instance photographic or photo-realistic images) that could not be reproduced using basic geometrical shapes.

Printing or Saving 2D Textured Polygons in 2D Format

When working in the Drafting or 2D Layout for 3D Design workbench, 2D polygons can be filled with a texture. Such polygons are correctly drawn when saved or printed in CGM, PS, PDF or SVG format.

However, when using a Microsoft driver to print 2D textured polygons, the result depends on the driver's ability to deal with the transparency in bitmap images. For instance in HPGL2 format, textured polygons are partially saved because of a restriction regarding areas outside the polygon's boundaries that might hide nearby entities. As HPGL format does not support images, polygons are thus saved without any texture.

Warning: It might not be possible to print, capture or export (through Save As) bitmap images with a large pixel width and/or height depending on the color depth, the pixel width and height of the image and of the current memory load in the V6 session.

When printing an image, the image needs a large continuous block of memory. The following recommendations might help you:


  • Whenever possible, use a vector image to describe vector geometries (you can insert vector images in a drawing)
  • Use a 64-bit computer (which has a larger memory allocation)
  • Whenever possible, convert the image to Grayscale or Black and White (e.g. TIFF with CCITT G3 encoding) before inserting it. This reduces the memory needed.