EPLAN Engineering Tools — PDF-to-DXF & PLC Documentation Automation

Scope of Work

• Cracked EPLAN's custom PDF glyph encoding by parsing the raw PDF content stream directly, recovering accurate vector geometry and text that standard extractors — and commercial tools — garble.
• Built converters from Rockwell Studio 5000 (L5X) and Siemens S7-300/TIA Portal PLC exports into EPLAN-compatible import data and complete QElectroTech drawing sets: cover sheet, symbol legend, per-module I/O folios, terminal strips, and bill of materials.
• Data-driven symbol and pin matching against vendor reference tables, deliberately avoiding low-confidence guesses — unmatched items are left explicit rather than silently assumed.

Architecture

EPLAN's PDF export uses a custom-embedded font with no standard character mapping, defeating ordinary text extraction. The tool parses the PDF's raw content stream — tracking the graphics-state and text-transformation operators directly — to recover exact vector geometry and character data, then feeds that into per-vendor converters that translate PLC I/O and tag data into CAD-ready drawing sets.

Technology

• Python 3.10+
• PyMuPDF (PDF content-stream parsing)
• ezdxf (DXF generation)
• QElectroTech (open-source CAD format)

Result

On the bundled reference project, the tool generates a complete 32-folio QElectroTech drawing set from a single Rockwell L5X export.