There appears to be an issue with the Export to WMF creator. Since last week several of my WMF files can not be used as items in them blow up so big all I get is a black screen or fat lines when viewed in any Microsoft program. Using an EMF file created in StarDraw has never been an issue up until last week. We use EMF files, created in Stardraw, quite a bit and this is a big issue as a lot of our documentation is no longer usable.

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DavidG - 11/8/2021 6:09:49 PM

There appears to be an issue with the Export to WMF creator. Since last week several of my WMF files can not be used as items in them blow up so big all I get is a black screen or fat lines when viewed in any Microsoft program. Using an EMF file created in StarDraw has never been an issue up until last week. We use EMF files, created in Stardraw, quite a bit and this is a big issue as a lot of our documentation is no longer usable.

David,
Can you send your project file and your exported WMF file to techsupport at stardraw dot com ?
We'd be happy to have a look at the problem as soon as we receive them.


David Snipp
Stardraw.com Ltd

David,
Thanks for sending your files through.
We have investigated the problem and it appears that there is a recent regression in Windows 10/11.
We were able to implement a fix when drawing to the screen but it doesn't appear to work when drawing to a metafile.
This page on the Microsoft website describes the issue: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/589319/gdiplus-pen-constructor-change-of-behaviour-in-win.html
We are in contact with Microsoft Support to get them to fix the problem but until then, can I suggest you use the Print to PDF functionality in Windows 10/11 to save your drawings in a scalable format?


David Snipp
Stardraw.com Ltd

The only issue with using the pdf is things sometimes tend to get fuzzy especially text when the drawing is stretched or reduced to fit a page. This is why the export to EMF worked so nice for us.

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DavidG - 11/10/2021 1:47:34 PM

The only issue with using the pdf is things sometimes tend to get fuzzy especially text when the drawing is stretched or reduced to fit a page. This is why the export to EMF worked so nice for us.

David,
I can see that this can happen if you are importing from a DWG file and then printing to a PDF if the original DWG contained lines that represented Text characters then it can all get a bit squishy when stretched.
However, if the original DWG had actual Text that you could select and edit, then we will preserve that Text so you should also be able to edit it in Stardraw and then when you Print to PDF, the Text should also be preserved and you should also at least be able to select it in your PDF Viewer. If this is the case, then the Text should be rendered in the PDF with anti-aliasing if necessary to produce clean text.
If you feel that this is not the case, then please email us a sample project file, complete with the DWG (if appropriate) and the resultant PDF and we'd be happy to have a look and make any recommendations.

David Snipp
Stardraw.com Ltd