Exporting EAGLE schematic/gerbers into vector-font PDF

Hello again! I’ve searched several forums & documents and spent hours testing several solutions, but can’t seem to figure this out…

I need to take my .sch and .brd (or gerber files) and convert them into vector-font PDFs. This way, I can search for “R4” in the PDF and it will highlight the part.

This is for documentation, so I need these in PDF format – any other format won’t work for this purpose here.

I’ve tried:

  • - Ghostscript
  • - Ghostview w/ PStoEdit
  • - PrimoPDF
  • - Printing my files to PDF/PS, and
  • - Converting to DXF and converting with AutoCAD DWG/DXF to PDF converter
  • These all produce a PDF that I can open with Adobe, but I can’t search for text. I may have done one of the above incorrectly, so please help guide me in the right direction.

    Thanks in advance!

    Try PDFFactory.

    Thanks for your response, codlink! I downloaded PDFFactory and tried it out, but it prints out in much the same way as Adobe does: as an image.

    hmm. Google some tutorials and see if your skipping a step. You’re running Eagle 6.3, right?

    Yes, I’m running the latest Eagle Standard package and the latest PDFFactory freeware. I couldn’t find such a tutorial after several hours of searching (I always search for answers before I post in the forum).

    I searched the EAGLE help for “pdf” and got the following:

    If the output file name has an extension of “.pdf” (case insensitive), a PDF file will be created. A PDF file can also be created by selecting “Print to File (PDF)” from the “Printer” combo box in the print dialog. Texts in a PDF file can be searched in a PDF viewer, as long as they are not using the vector font.

    I have “always use vector font” on for proper gerber creation, but even after changing the font type in the schematics, it doesn’t work…

    Unfortunately, I cannot think of anything else being I am not at your computer. Maybe someone will chime in with an idea.