Brad Hofman sends us a tip on capturing linework from AutoCAD drawings and pasting it into a Microsoft Word file.
"Print the DWG layout to PDF. Copy the desired information in the PDF to the clipboard. Paste the DWG/PDF information from the clipboard to Word.
"That's it in a nutshell, but here it is again in greater detail: Open the desired drawing in an AutoCAD-based product, v2008 or later. Print the layout containing the desired information to PDF using the "DWG to PDF.pc3" setup file (consider creating a custom variant to get your linetypes right).
Open the resulting PDF file in Adobe Reader. Use the Snapshot tool to select the desired area.
Zoom the view to 400% (experiment with the level of magnification; 300% may give you sufficient image quality and reduce the size of your finished document).
Right-click in the selected area and copy the selected graphic to the clipboard.
Paste the selected graphic into Word and use grips to size the graphics window."
Notes from Cadalyst Tip Patrol: You can skip the step of printing to PDF, but you might not get the results you want. While in AutoCAD, select the objects you want to see in the Word file. Use the Windows Copy command (Ctrl+C), open Word (or any similar program), and paste into the file. This will take a snapshot of the area you selected and paste it into your file. The background of the image will be the same color as your background in AutoCAD.