Custom Block Preview Slides are Difficult to Read After Running BatchMan

Issue

You ran our BatchMan tool, possibly to adddress an issue where you're unable to see the preview slides for your custom blocks when placing generic content, and now your preview slides are hard to read compared with Land F/X generic content.

 

Example of custom block preview slides experiencing this issue

 

Example of default Land F/X block preview slides

Are your slides showing with black backgrounds and therefore hard to read?

It's because your Model Space background color is currently set to black. Change your background color to white in the CAD Options dialog box, Display tab. Then run BatchMan again. Your previews should read much better.

The linework in the previews will still be thin, so our recommended workflow of converting to an SVG is still the best solution if BatchMan isn't working for you.

 

Block previews not visible when background color is set to black

 

Block previews visible when background color is set to white

Cause

With our November 2025 update, our generic content dialog boxes now display previews of SVG (.svg) files for all default Land F/X content, as well as PNG (.png) files for all custom content. We made these changes to accommodate:

• The lifespan and function of the SLD file format within CAD, and
• The fact that SLD files are incompatible with the 3D platforms for which we've developed Land F/X plugins

Solution

Step 1: Convert and download your files.

1A. Open cloudconvert and upload the DWG files you need to convert.

1B. Set the File Converters menu to convert from DWG to SVG.

1C. Click Select file, then browse to the folder containing the files you need to convert.

1D. Once you have all files selected and loaded, scroll to the bottom of the list and click Convert.

You'll see a preview of the first file as it completes. Just click Close for now.

 

1E. Once your files have converted, you'll see a green Finished tag next to each item. Click the All Files button, and select Download All from the menu that opens.

1F. Once your files have downloaded, you'll see a zip file in your Downloads folder. Double-click this file to extract it and view the newly created SVG files.

If you find that your images are cut off, not centered, or not showing the entire contents, you likely didn't save your CAD file with the entire contents in view before closing it. If so, run BatchMan on all files, selecting the Make Slide option, and then selecting your preferred Save As option.

 

 

Then run the convert steps again starting with Step 1A above.

Step 2: Download and run the Adobe Illustrator batch conversion script.

Now that you a have an SVG file for each custom block, you'll need to run a script through Adobe Illustrator that will:

• Convert the colored SVG file to black and white, and
• Set thicknesses to the linework based on the layers/colors used in CAD

2A. Download the script file linked below.

2B. Open Adobe Illustrator to a blank document. Any default template file should work.

2C. In Illustrator, open the File menu. Select Scripts from the menu, then select Other script...

2C. Browse to the location where you saved the illustrator-batch-master-js file download in step 2A above. Open the file, then select the operations to perform and click OK.

2D. Select the folder of converted/downloaded SVG files.

Click Yes at the Include subfolders? and Save files in place? prompts.

 

 

2E. Once the script has finished running, you should see a message letting you know how the batch processing went.

 

You should now be able to put these newly created SVG files back into the appropriate location within folder where you keep your custom blocks, and the previews within the generic content dialog box should look much better.