Coding Image

  • Thread starter Thread starter Don
  • Start date Start date
D

Don

Hello, I have a client who currently has a pdf of a building floor plan, they
want each room color coded based on certain information. I currently have a
web service that provides me information about each room. How do you go
about coding something like this? Do use some type of image control and then
later convert it to pdf?
 
When you say they want each room color-coded based on certain information,
it isn't clear exactly what they're asking for. I presume there are images
in the PDF document. To "color-code" the images, in any case, you would have
to extract the images from the original PDF and edit them somehow. To work
with PDF in the .Net Framework, there are a good number of utilities out
there:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=.Net+PDF

--
HTH,

Kevin Spencer
Chicken Salad Surgeon
Microsoft MVP
 
I'm a CAD guy from way back; architecture or manufacturing,
I can draw and model anything.

Basically Kevin is correct --as usual--but-- he
may not have the insight a CAD guy has and pdf is really good for shit
so here's what I would do on the basis of what has been made known...

Think of the same methodology we use for rollover buttons.

I would dump the shitty pdf format and use a light-weight gif or png to
absolutely position the floor plan with CSS the plan in a page. I would
create a library of various colored images for each room or space in the
floor plan that needs to be "colored" dynamically. I would use the DOM event
model and CSS with z-order values to overlay colored copies of the desried
areas on the floor plan. Think in "layers" as the web designers/developers
got the notion of layers from CAD operators/drafters who have been using
overlay drafting methodologies long before computers and CAD were invented.

There's other opportunitie$ in this particular vertical market if you are
interested in collaborating.

Look at this for example [1]. Its been built with CFML (which is good for
shit) and they failed during several steps to make the process seamless and
transparent lacking a lot of the lookups and related specifications that
lighting designers actually need --but-- I admire the effort and it shows
some companies are really starting to "get it."

This is one reason why I am spending every available minute learning WPF and
Silverlight but for the time being Don, what you want to get done is best
achieved using DHTML on the client using data you are getting from your web
service (which may even be superfluous itself).

<%= Clinton Gallagher
NET csgallagher AT metromilwaukee.com
URL http://clintongallagher.metromilwaukee.com/

[1]
http://192.234.68.95/CC_host/pages/custom/templates/HLP/assemble.cfm?cc_nvl=()&cc_tsf=&cc_tvl=
 
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