Hey Nathan – you definitely could use an image from a camera in Scan2CAD. But we’ve found best results have been obtained using a scanner.

That’s because if you’re using a camera, you’ll need to put work into creating a suitable environment.

For example, the camera would have to be perfectly parallel to the object to ensure your design is not skewed, you need a clean background, you need suitable lighting etc.

Scanning an object ensures you have all of these things in place.

I have used other software where you just snap a picture of the pattern and using a known length (a ruler beside the pattern) you know how to scale the picture to match the pattern. Why couldn’t Scan2CAD use a picture from a high quality camera?

Purchase a scanner for paper this size or go to a scanning shop and ask them to the scan the paper.

1. You’ll need a flatbed scanner large enough. We don’t recommend specific models but you can’t really go wrong as long as it’s large enough.

2. When you have a suitable scanner, we have a help article for the best scanner settings.

3. When you have a suitable image from the scanner you should convert the image using Scan2CAD.

What are my options to digitize these patterns?