Exporting OG into Adobe InDesign CS2
 

Hi,

Aside from being a completely new MAC user, I've got to produce an ~300 page document in InDesign in the next few weeks. It incorporates about 100 flowcharts which I current have in Visio format. I've figured out how to save them in .vdx format and open them in Omnigraffle (though I will say there are some spacing issues with text inside boxes that aren't there in the Visio program). But I can not find the way to get them from visio or omnigraffle into InDesign. Any ideas?

thanks,
Chris

In my experience using InDesign when working in PrePress/commercial printing, along with working with Graffle and Visio, I find that best practice is to export from OmniGraffle as PDF for inclusion within InDesign; I seem to recall Visio 2002 being able to export to Adobe Illustrator or EPS format, however I don't see this option available in Visio 2003.

HTH,

[QUOTE=Joel]In my experience using InDesign when working in PrePress/commercial printing, along with working with Graffle and Visio, I find that best practice is to export from OmniGraffle as PDF for inclusion within InDesign; I seem to recall Visio 2002 being able to export to Adobe Illustrator or EPS format, however I don't see this option available in Visio 2003.

HTH,[/QUOTE]

The final product has to be in PDF format so would there be a problem with putting a PDF into InDesign and then exporting again in PDF?

The previous time I did this project, it was PC based.. .I used Pagemaker and Visio and I could import the Visio files directly and then once placed in Pagemaker, if I wanted to edit them, I just clicked on them and up started Visio...which then automatically updated it in Pagemaker.

Is there nothing as elegant with a Mac? Any combo of programs where I can do something similar? I've been working with Mac all of 3 days now so I'm at the bottom of a steep learning curve.. Perhaps I should go back to PC for this project...

Chris

I don't believe there is a problem with pulling a PDF into InDesign and then exporting the ID document back to PDF. I use ID a lot and my gut feel (no real data) is that it maintains the PDF definition of the diagram and exports that directly to the final PDF (i.e. no copy machine effect).

The other approach that I usually use is to just export as a JPG and do the same thing -- the JPG is more flexible IMHO since I can pull it into many different programs (like PowerPoint).

Either way there is an extra step beyond just importing the graffle file (like you imported the Visio file) but beyond that it is a pretty clean process. ID will detect whenever the linked PDF or JPG changes and you can just click to update it.

There's zero problems with placing a PDF and exporting to same, you can do so in OmniGraffle and see for yourself.

As for the interoperability between Visio and PageMaker on Windows, that has to do with OLE, the closest you'll find on OS X is [URL="http://www.linkbackproject.org/"]LinkBack[/URL], which OmniGraffle supports.

I tried it quickly once (saving as a pdf file) and it seemed to degrade the quality of the text (as viewed on 200% magnification only). Is that the case or will it export to pdf fine?

Chris

Did you have High Quality display performance selected? It should export just fine. I embed PDF docs in InDesign quite often, never had a problem.

[QUOTE=Forrest]Did you have High Quality display performance selected? It should export just fine. I embed PDF docs in InDesign quite often, never had a problem.[/QUOTE]

K, so this is sad, but I can't find that setting...

Chris

[QUOTE=txemsdoc]K, so this is sad, but I can't find that setting...

Chris[/QUOTE]

right-click on the image that looks low quality, down at the bottom should be "Display Performance." (This is within InDesign.)