Bitmap Pictures

See Also:   Vector and bitmap differences  Picture Menu Picture Questions Manage Pictures

All serious CAD (Computer Assisted Drawing) programs store plans in a vector format.

This allows for accurate scaling and printing.

Home Plan Pro, relies on a vector format to store drawing elements.

In addition, you can also insert pictures into your plan.

Bitmap pictures are another group of image formats. 

Bitmaps have their own advantages: 

• They are capable of displaying realistic looking complex images. 
• Many bitmaps in Window's .BMP format are available
• Many bitmaps in .GIF and .JPG formats are readily available on the Internet

Because bitmaps cannot scale well, they are not normally used in CAD programs. 

Home Plan Pro can make use of bitmaps. You can insert bitmap pictures into your plans and move, resize, and rotate each one as a unit.

Because they are different, they cannot be selected and manipulated in exactly the same way as Home Plan Pro's native drawing elements.

• The bitmap pictures are located in files on your hard drive.

• The plan file doesn't store the bitmap picture. It stores the location of the bitmap's file.

• When your plan is loaded, Home Plan Pro looks for the picture's file and loads it into your plan.

If the picture can't be found, a message to that effect appears on your screen.