The NHS shares how they use Scan2CAD to convert imagery of tumours to a CAD/CAM format to manufacture lead shielding for radiation therapy.

Radiation therapy & Scan2CAD in cancer treatment

In radiation therapy; high-energy radiation is introduced to cancerous cells, damaging the cells inhabiting their ability to divide and grow. This radiation can be damaging to healthy cells therefore it is important that the treatment is only applied to the target areas. 

It is for this reason that NHS Mechanical Design Engineers turned to Scan2CAD for help in manufacturing a solution for shielding non-target cells from radiation.

Radiographers performing a CT scan

The goal of the NHS Engineers was to improve the accuracy and time involved in producing lead plates by turning to Scan2CAD. These lead plates are used as a form of ‘radiation shielding’ blocking potentially harmful ionizing radiation to vulnerable areas of the patient’s body.

Converting profiles of tumours with Scan2CAD

The NHS start by obtaining an image of a patient’s tumour using radiography. Next, a profile of this tumour is created from the scan. With an image of the tumour profile engineers use Scan2CAD to automatically convert the raster image to a precise vector profile which can be exported to a CAD/CAM format such as DXF or DWG. 

Finally, the DXF or DWG file is imported into CAM software controlling a CNC machine which cuts the tumour profile from a lead plate.

1. A CT scan of the tumour is obtained. 2. A profile of the tumour is drawn. 3. The image is converted in Scan2CAD. 4. Scan2CAD created an accurate vector outline of the tumour for CAD/CAM.
Example tumour image source.

Saving time and improving accuracy

Of course, the conversions of the tumour profile must be perfectly accurate to the original image and scaled to the correct dimensions, therefore ensuring the manufactured plate is protecting all but the target areas of the patient’s body.

Scan2CAD’s raster to vector conversion technology creates a precise conversion of the profiles. These vector lines are optimized for CAM purposes, connected polylines with as few node points as possible whilst staying true to the original form.

After the automatic conversion, Scan2CAD gives users the ability to easily scale the vector design from the original image scan’s DPI or from a defined measurement. The exported CAD/CAM file will have accurate dimensions according to these scaling settings.

The original raster image of the tumour profile and the converted vector outline in Scan2CAD

NHS Engineers discovered that Scan2CAD removed the need the need to manually trace a design in AutoCAD, saving hours per day in time spent manually tracing. Due to the accuracy of Scan2CAD’s automatic conversion the time saved is greater even when compared to other conversion software.

The implementation of Scan2CAD in the manufacturing process saved time, improved production accuracy and reduced overall costs.

Scan2CAD: Hi Jacob, thanks for your time! You’re currently studying for a PhD in near surface geophysics—could you tell us a little more about this subject?

Jacob: Geophysics is basically a set of remote sensing methods that allow humans to ‘see’ parts of the earth that we usually can’t (e.g., oil reservoirs 30,000 feet down or a landmine buried just under the surface). These methods use waves (sound, electromagnetic, thermal, gravitational, or light) to identify the thing of interest (e.g., the oil or the landmine) while ‘seeing’ through the stuff that surrounds the thing of interest (usually rock or dirt). It’s like when a fire fills a room with dense smoke, and the firefighters can’t see the people inside. They use a thermal scanner that picks up people’s body heat and can ‘see’ through the smoke. We use similar methods, and if those methods are used to investigate the top 300 or so feet of the earth, it’s called near surface geophysics.

A few other students at Texas A&M and myself research ways to look for groundwater, especially underground rivers flowing through buried, loose sand. We’re developing methods that let us ‘see’ these underground rivers so we can make 3D maps of where they are underground. Hopefully, this will allow farmers and ranchers to pinpoint the best location to drill new water wells for their crops and herds.

Scan2CAD: What drove you to study near surface geophysics?

Jacob: Well, where I grew up (Fort Worth, TX), everybody mutters about groundwater. Whether working outside or sitting around the dinner table, the conversation always comes around to “water level in the well has been getting lower”, “I think the water’s starting to taste funny”, and “I want to drill a new well but who knows if we’ll actually hit water…or if it’ll even be clean enough to drink”.

No one seemed to precisely know where the groundwater was, so I decided to try to find methods to survey the top 300 feet of the earth (where a lot of small scale operations get their water from) and make 3D maps. Using these maps, farmers and ranchers will be able identify where on the surface and how deep to drill for steady, clean water before they pay for the expensive drilling.

Scan2CAD: What is Electrical Resistivity Imaging (ERI) and why is it important?

Jacob: ERI is similar to an X-ray. An X-ray is a ‘slice’ through your body, a map if you will of that particular plane that passes through you. ERI takes a similar ‘slice’ through the earth, a vertical slice that is called a tomogram. Using rebar pounded into the ground along a long line and connected to a control box, we scan for resistivity (how easily electricity moves through a material) at thousands of points underground. Sand has a high resistivity, and those values are labeled in orange and red on our tomograms.

Scan2CAD: Why did you need to convert the imagery to CAD?

Jacob: After running the ERI survey, the machine displays the 2D vertical tomogram (~583 feet long by ~135 feet deep). I could save the tomograms as raster PDFs, and I used AutoCAD 2018 to rotate them in 3D so I could see them in their correct positions in relation to each other. However, I couldn’t cleanly get rid of the white background for the tomograms, and that made my 3D map look as choppy as a cut and paste letter. So I went searching for a program that would cleanly get rid of the background and stumbled across Scan2CAD. The vectorization process did the trick, I input the new vectorized PDFs into AutoCAD, and the 3D map looked great. My professor gave me a high compliment for it.

But then the next day, quite by accident, I was playing around in AutoCAD when I saw a number appear in a sidebar. I had just discovered I could select a single color in a vectorized tomogram, and the number was labeled “Area”. I won’t get into all the details, but to calculate how fast water can flow through sand, one first has to calculate the area of sand it’s flowing through. I was getting ready to begin a several month project writing a code to calculate those areas from the raw data, and yet lo and behold, with Scan2CAD’s vectorized PDFs, AutoCAD could almost instantly calculate those areas for me.

My jaw literally dropped, and I ran down the hall to my professor. Bringing your boss news that you just found a three minute solution to what would have been a three month project is one of the best feelings in the world, and I am extraordinarily grateful that Scan2CAD let me have that feeling. Keep up the good work, and I look forward to continuing to use this amazing software!

Converting electrical resistivity imaging step-by-step

Interested in seeing how Jacob went about converting his images? Here’s a step-by-step guide to the process.

① In Scan2CAD, open a screenshot of a particular portion of the original JPEG of contoured data (underground electrical resistivity).

② Click the “fx” icon. Select Segment (Multiple Colors) under Color Reduction and change the Maximum Color Scale to 17. The original jpeg contour used 16 colors, plus 1 more for the black outline. Leave all other defaults unchanged. Click OK on the far left.

③ Click the Vectorization icon. Change Vectorization Method from Technical to Outline and increase the Vector definition from 5 to 25. Leave all other defaults unchanged.

④ Click Run on the far left. Watch the “Vectorization is now being performed…” bar.

⑤ View the vectorized file.

⑥ Click the Show Raster icon in the middle bottom of the current window. Compare raster image against vector and verify the vectorization process worked. Click “OK” on the far left.

⑦ Scroll cursor over vector file to ensure it highlights sections appropriately.

⑧ Save file as PDF.

⑨ Open AutoCAD 2018. Wait patiently. Import vectorized PDFs, rotate in 3D, and arrange on vectorized screenshot of Google Earth.

And that’s it!

You’ve seen what Scan2CAD did for Jacob. Why not see what it can do for you? Try Scan2CAD yourself with our no-obligation free trial. Just click the button below to get started.

Fortunately, we’re happy to report that there’s no shortage of Scan2CAD success stories. Amongst them are sculptor David Mayne and model aircraft manufacturers Camden Custom Cutters. In today’s article, though, we’re turning our attention to Steve Mabbutt, a trainee interior designer from South West England. We’ll take a look at how he decided on his career path, his influences, and (of course!) how he uses Scan2CAD.

Scan2CAD: Hi Steve, thanks for taking the time to answer a few questions for us! So, you’re training in Interior Design at the University of South Wales—why did you choose interior design as a career path?

Steve: I chose interior design years ago while studying graphic design at a lower educational level. I’d grown up obsessed with The Sims and had frequently redesigned and rearranged rooms of my house—much to my mother’s dismay!

Then, coincidentally, I’d been working on a project which involved renovating the local hospital to provide graphic artwork to keep the patients positive and calm. Against my tutor’s advice I created a full design schedule and model, which paved the way for my career today!

Steve’s initial floor plan

Scan2CAD: What excites you about interior design?

Steve: Unlimited possibilities and new technology! Combining design styles and movements from different periods with life in the present day is a challenging task, but the feeling of accomplishment afterwards is completely worth it.

Many people believe interior design to be about fluffy pillows and wallpaper, when the reality is much more architectural. Understanding spatial layouts, building regulations and prioritising the clients’ needs are all part of any project, and I love nothing more than discovering something new that needs to be solved.

Steve’s finished design

Scan2CAD: Who or what are your influences in interior design?

Steve: The influences I use are massively dependent on the project itself. The client will normally have an existing idea. Failing that, the building’s character and history will help me to associate relevant influences. My personal influences, however, are quite broad.

I’m a massive fan of modernist (i.e., De Stijl and Bauhaus), minimalist and industrial styles. People such as Arne Jacobsen (famous for the Egg chair), Eero Saarinen and Tadao Ando have designs I could admire for years. In fact, I recently had the opportunity to visit Japan and see some of Ando’s buildings—I was like a kid in a candy shop!

Scan2CAD: What design software do you use in your work?

Steve: Often, this will depend on what I’m designing. AutoCAD is the main software I use for plans, elevations and sections, while Revit and 3DS Max are used for visual renders. However, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Fusion 360 also get used a great deal, especially when my 3D printer is involved! Oh, and—of course—Scan2CAD!

Scan2CAD: Tell us about a project for which you’ve used Scan2CAD—and show us the end results!

Steve: For my final major project, I had to select an empty building which is in need of a new purpose so that it can be utilized by the local community. I selected a three-storey building in a small town in the South West of England and contacted the local council for as much information as possible.

The plan was to create an arts and crafts center which would bring life back to the area, and repurpose a building which was once part of a leather glove factory. The plans, elevations, sections and area maps were all sent to me as PDF files, and with the size of the project, it would have taken me at least another month to manually redraw everything required.

Steve’s 3D printed model – inside and out!

Scan2CAD dropped that time down to less than an hour, and has actually put me ahead of schedule by so much that I’ve had two holidays since the project started! The plans after conversion were very much usable, though they required some tweaking and cleaning up. Whether that’s down to user error, or just the best I could achieve with dirty scans, it certainly hasn’t caused me any big problems. (Editor’s note: check out our raster cleanup tools for best results!) In fact, fellow students have even asked for help with converting PDF to DWG, too!

If, like Steve, you prefer lounging on a beach to toiling at your desk, you’ll love Scan2CAD, which can vectorize raster images and PDFs in as little as a few seconds. To enjoy learn more about Scan2CAD, click below.

About Camden Custom Cutters

Over the past seven years, Camden Custom Cutters have been making kits for radio-controlled model aircraft. The business caters to the community of model aircraft enthusiasts who are looking for something a little different from your standard kit. As such, the kits that Camden Custom Cutters produce aren’t available from other commercial sources; in many cases, they are one-of-a-kind.

The image above shows how one of Camden Custom Cutters’ models looks when fully assembled. But there’s a lot of work that goes into each model before it gets to that stage. For the customer, it involves hours of gluing, screwing, bolting, and decorating, as well as installing engines and other equipment. However, the real work on each model begins in Camden.

How each kit is created

In some cases, Camden Custom Cutters are able to find existing designs to use to create their kits. Often, however, the company has to start from the very beginning: with a pencil and paper. Camden Custom Cutters will create a usable paper plan set for their model, before scanning it into a digital image—usually in PDF format. After that is where Scan2CAD comes in. Camden use Scan2CAD to convert their raster images to vector images—a crucial part of the process, laying the groundwork for all future stages.

After using Scan2CAD to convert from PDF to DWG, Camden Custom Cutters can edit their design in Scan2CAD or export to another CAD application like AutoCAD. This helps them to make necessary edits and tweaks, making their designs production-ready. Then, they’ll identify specific aircraft parts and make nested DXF files. Next comes the manufacturing stage: Camden use high-powered laser cutters to machine their aircraft parts out of thin wood sheets, such as balsa, poplar, or basswood. Then, the manufactured parts are ready to ship out to customers, who assemble the models ready for radio-controlled flight.

From Paper Design to CAD and Manufacturing

The original Paper design (top right). The design converted in Scan2CAD (lower right) and the laser cut shapes.

One recent example of a model created by Camden Custom Cutters is the British World War I Sopwith Triplane aircraft below. As with all models, it started life as a large paper blueprint. It was then scanned and saved as a TIFF file. Then, Camden used Scan2CAD to convert from TIFF to DXF. After editing the designs, they are saved as DXF. At this point, it was ready for laser cutting in balsa wood.

And the final result? Well, it’s something quite amazing. Here’s the fully assembled aircraft.

The fully assembled model by Camden Custom Cutters

Why Scan2CAD?

For Camden Custom Cutters, it was a case of trying the rest before trying the best. The company had already put several other raster-to-vector conversion programs to the test before Scan2CAD. When they discovered Scan2CAD, they quickly realised it was superior by far.

Roger Marshall is the man behind the business; the one who transforms paper designs into finished aircraft parts.

According to Roger;

As well as the software’s technical superiority, Roger also credits the Scan2CAD team for their support and responsiveness. He notes that when experiencing some file size issues with the software, “support staff quickly resolved our problems with later releases”.

It’s been five years since the company started using Scan2CAD, and it’s a partnership that looks set to continue well into the future. Scan2CAD has helped Roger turn ideas into reality, and allowed his business to take off.

Scan2CAD is helping makers to create innovative and unique products the world over. As the market leader in conversion, Scan2CAD is the ultimate vectorization software, and comes complete with a wide range of raster and vector editing tools to help you get the job done.

One such artist is Yorkshire-based sculptor David Mayne, whose work melds together the industrial and the natural, and features in galleries and public spaces across the UK. We spoke to David about his latest exhibition, his inspirations, and how Scan2CAD helps bring his concepts to life.

Andy: Hi David, thanks for agreeing to be featured on the Scan2CAD blog!

One of the defining features of your work has been the use of metal. What attracted you to feature this material so prominently in your sculptures?

David: I started using metal after completing my degree in Sheffield back in the late 80s. Sheffield still had a number of steel works at the time and there were abundant scrap yards where it was possible to simply walk around and collect interesting bits of metal. I used scrap metal for many years because of its inherent quality and loved the fact that it had a past life and often still contained flecks of paint or other markings that hinted at its former existence. I now create more refined pieces but still oxidise the surface of the steel to create different colours.

One of David’s earlier works, Bear, has stood in the Bear Pit in Sheffield’s Botanical Gardens since 2005

 
Andy: Where do you derive inspiration for your art from?

David: In the past my inspiration came from ancient artefacts and civilisations but more recently I am making work influenced by landscape and activities with in it. Partly autobiographical – partly aspirational.

Andy: In contrast to the industrial materials used in your work, your newest exhibition, Into the Wild, focuses on nature and landscapes. What made you focus on these themes?

David: I have a lifelong passion with nature and landscape – from early days of climbing and hill walking to mountain biking and fell running. The small town of Holmfirth where I live and work is surrounded by areas of stunning woodland and wild and beautiful hills and moorland. The work I create is a response to the landscape and past adventures within it.

David’s work is inspired by the landscapes in and around the Yorkshire town of Holmfirth

 
It all started as a teenager when I first went hill walking in the Yorkshire Dales. Growing up in north Leeds gave easy access to various crags for climbing, and bus rides further afield to the Yorkshire Dales to have a bash at the Three Peaks and other hills. A few years later after increased hiking trips, I completed the Pennine Way at the age of sixteen. My love of the outdoors continued to grow with more camping trips and expeditions throughout the UK. This led to competing in endurance events over 12 and then 24 hours. Later in life I started racing mountain bikes. I just love to be outside and be active.

David’s piece Singletrack draws on his love of mountain biking

 
Andy: Could you explain the process of creating your art – from design to fabrication?

David: I work from a very simple sketch to then making a maquette (scale model). From the maquette I am able to hold an actual 3D object and assess it from various viewpoints. In my practice as an artist working in the public realm to create large scale public artwork these maquettes and scale models are incredibly useful – not just to myself, but they also help engineers and clients visualise and understand the proposed concept.

I also really enjoy the process of making something. For gallery work it tends to be a simple sketch that is either scanned or photographed, then transferred to Photoshop. I then refine things in Photoshop – often creating a silhouette image so I can visualise completely just how something will look when laser cut. I never climbed the steep learning curve of using AutoCAD, but since discovering Scan2CAD I can now simply export my raster drawings into the programme and convert to the required vector file for laser cutting.

From a sketch…

…to a scanned image…

…through Scan2CAD…

…to a finished work of art.

Andy: What kinds of tools or machinery do you use to cut your designs into metal?

David: I use a hand-held plasma cutter to prototype most of my work, and for one-off unique pieces. However, I also produce a range of multiples, and I need to have large quantities of certain components cut, and use local laser cutting companies for this.

Andy: Finally, where could you go to see the Into the Wild exhibition?

David: Into the Wild is currently on display at Cupola Gallery Sheffield until 25th June. I will then be taking part in a contemporary art fair in York from 30th September – 2nd October called Art Market York. After that, it’s an exhibition at Yorkshire Sculpture Park called MADE, which runs from mid-November through to early February 2017.

David’s work spans exhibitions, private commissions, and landmark features. To view a full portfolio of his work, visit his website.

 
Feeling inspired? For more information on how to use Scan2CAD to bring your drawings to life, visit our guide on how to convert an image for CNC.

Related articles

• Scan2CAD in Sculpture Art
• Scan2CAD in Kitchen Design
• Catherine’s Favorite Examples of Great Architecture

Schematic’s of Datarota’s custom designed machine

The company’s specialism is the design and control of special-purpose machines. In 2001 they needed to convert a hand-drawn profile into a machine-cut component so they turned to Scan2CAD. Peter inputs the DXF file from Scan2CAD into their purpose built machine  which cuts material by rotating it on a turntable while driving an ultrasonic knife on a radial axis.

The project was a great success and they are presently building the 26th machine that operates on the same principle, with many more leads in the pipeline.  For a company that usually designs one-offs, this is a very good thing. Datarota has trusted Scan2CAD since 2001 and, although they only use a fraction of its power, they would not be able to do what they do without it. Their customers receive training in the basic Scan2CAD skills necessary to “clean” a hand-drawn profile and turning it into a usable DXF file.

Q & A’s

Your cutting machine is very interesting. Is this effectively a bespoke CNC machine? 

Yes, I guess it is.  Custom and practice in this field involves the use of hand-held scissors cutting round a template which is stuck to the blank – a very slow process which is not good for RSI, so a CNC-type solution was bound to be welcomed.

It’s great to hear that you’re able to train your clients the basic processes. The ‘cleaning’ of a drawing is a necessary (but sometimes monotonous) task isn’t it? As someone who has been an engineer for some years do the modern-day cleaning tools that Scan2CAD offer save time compared to those from years ago?

I have no experience of prior methods – Scan2CAD is my first and only experience of ‘cleaning’ profiles.

Can you tell me more about the characteristics of the ideal vector image you aim to create ready for cutting? Are there certain shapes or lines which are more troublesome than others? 

The profiles usually arrive with our customers as hand-drawn shapes (as BMPs), usually approximately circular or elliptical, but rarely ‘regular’ and hence could not be characterised formulaically.  Typically, the ‘cleaning’ process will be used to remove unwanted speckles and ‘tails’ and to bridge gaps.  Sometimes it is necessary to remove an ID number that exists within the locus of the profile.

What has been your biggest challenge in this project?

The biggest software challenge was the mathematics.  Starting with a ‘random’ profile, the maths necessary to combine the turntable rotation with the ultrasonic knife vector (single axis) in order to achieve that profile is highly complex.  High-precision servos are required for the motor and blade drives and there are other issues to address, such as modulating the rotational speed to sustain a fixed cutting speed regardless of the cutting radius.  Some profiles are highly re-entrant and quick response is required too.  Machine-wise, the key development areas were how to locate the blank product (which is a ‘bag’, only one face of which must be cut) and the deployment of ultrasonics to cope with cutting glue-surfaced products.  The blanks are drawn from a stock of many hundreds of types – of varying size, thickness, material etc and the machine must cope with all of them.

As some tasks could potentially be repetitive, do you ever use Scan2CAD’s batch conversion tool or the automation via command line?

The received profiles are inconsistently ‘different’.  I did trial the batch feature for a customer who had a backlog of ‘000s of templates.  That way we could pre-process the removal of speckles etc but too many profiles needed ‘special’ treatment, so we abandoned it.

When teaching your clients the basics of Scan2CAD what has been the easiest thing for them to learn, what has been the hardest?

It’s hard to say.  I guess the easiest aspects are pre-scanning, scanning and de-speckling.  The hardest is spotting and correcting the apparently-tiny details which totally compromise production.  My software inspects the DXF produced by Scan2CAD and immediately lets them know if they need to have another go.

What do you think about Peter’s use of Scan2CAD? Did anything surprise you or do you use different methods that you’d like to share? Additionally, if you’d like to be featured in a user interview please get in touch.

In offering end-to-end solutions for Fire Service pre-incident planning, AnchorPoint Solutions now includes Scan2CAD v8 professional raster-to-vector and PDF-to-CAD conversion software in their product line-up. The company also uses Scan2CAD in-house for paper to CAD conversion.

AnchorPoint Solution’s customers are fire agencies who provide fire suppression, prevention and emergency medical services within their response areas. In order to have useful information available on potential emergency locations, fire agencies take the precaution of preparing and storing pre-incident plans of high risk buildings, complexes and institutions within their area.

Fire pre-incident planning is vital to successfully minimizing the loss of life and property. While complete information is seldom available to fire fighters during the first crucial minutes on scene, many factors affecting time critical decisions can be known in advance. Failing to use these factors in pre-planning a response means that fire agencies are forced to make strategic decisions based on incomplete information, often placing their response at a disadvantage.

Ideally, the pre-incident plan should be easy to read and contain pertinent information needed by fire agencies, e.g. the building’s location, exit points and any specific hazards, etc. For large facilities, pre-incident plans should contain several drawings in addition to one that clearly shows the overall building layout in relation to its street location with fire hydrants, assembly points, etc.

Many drawings are provided by the building’s owners. These are often cluttered with unnecessary details, such as lighting fixtures, plumbing and even furniture. Diagrams that are cluttered with other than the most important details such as alarm panel locations and sprinkler connections can be rendered more or less useless due to the time needed to decipher or sift through the drawing detail.

As modern building drawings created in CAD software are invariably layered, it is possible to add and delete layers when printing or copying from a file. Many building owners are willing to work with fire departments to customize drawings so that they show only the information that the fire department needs. Some are even willing to help by adding the fire department’s own symbols to their drawings.

However, there are times when no CAD file is available, when a building drawings exist only on paper. These still need to be captured in an electronic format for pre-incident planning. This is where Scan2CAD provides a handy solution to fire agencies. As the industry leading raster-to-vector converter, it automatically converts scanned paper drawings into a AutoCAD and similar PC CAD-compatible DXF file format. In this process, it is a relatively simple matter to extract only the detail that is needed.

“AnchorPoint Solutions is committed to helping public safety agencies solve the problem of managing a wide array of pre-incident building survey information needed to mitigate emergency situations. Scan2CAD fits well into the overall end-to-end solution for fire service pre-incident planning. Scan2CAD has the potential to fill a big gap in the process of completing pre-fire plans. It addresses an issue that can be a big stumbling block to the overall project success,” says Craig N. Coulson, President, AnchorPoint Solutions, LLC.

AnchorPoint Solution’s consultants offer years of practical experience with Fire Service Information Systems, Fire Operations and Fire Administration as well as project management for multiple system implementations, including Pre-Incident Planning, Computer Aided Dispatch, Records Management, Staffing, Medical Information, Building Inspections, etc. Its staff are experienced in implementing both custom and vendor information systems and in developing custom applications and systems that meet individual business needs.

“Softcover is pleased that AnchorPoint Solutions has chosen Scan2CAD as a vectorization solution for fire agencies needing to convert paper drawings into CAD-edtable DXF files. AnchorPoint Solutions expertise in all aspects of public safety technology, not just pre-incident fire planning, makes it an ideal partner for us in offering the benefits of Scan2CAD raster to vector conversion to fire agencies,” says Steve Hannath, Marketing Director of Softcover International.

AnchorPoint Solutions is also an authorized reseller of The Cad Zone’s The Fire Zone and First Look Pro, two dedicated software solutions for fire services. The Fire Zone is a CAD program tailored to meet the needs of firefighters and fire investigators. According to Craig, “The Fire Zone provides accurate, easy-to-read, pre-incident plans that save lives and property. It is the best software available for creating pre-incident plans, training diagrams, post-incident critique diagrams, and even courtroom-ready investigation diagrams. With Scan2CAD, we have a way to quickly import paper-based building plans into The Fire Zone as a DXF file for editing, thereby saving a lot of redrawing or tracing time.”

Scan2CAD is no stranger to use in fire and life safety services. One of its biggest US users is SimplexGrinnell and its parent, Tyco International. SimplexGrinnell is a long and historic leader in life safety and property protection. Over the years, these two companies and their approved agents, as well as building service engineers, estate and facilities managers, etc., have purchased hundreds of copies of Scan2CAD. It allows them to quickly convert scanned drawings of houses, offices, factories, education institutions, etc., into a DXF CAD floor plan for the fitting of SimplexGrinnell’s fire alarm, fire sprinkler, fire suppression, integrated security, sound and healthcare communications systems.

For further information, please contact:

Craig N. Coulson
President
AnchorPoint Solutions, LLC
www.anchorpts.com
coulsoc@anchorpts.com
425-770-4270

In the autumn of 2001, as soon as the Taliban regime was ousted, UNICEF began urgent humanitarian work improving schools and rebuilding and extending hospitals. Afghanistan has the highest maternal mortality ratio ever recorded, 6,500 deaths per 100,000 live births. Recent studies show that in the most rural parts of the country one woman dies every 20 minutes as a result of complications in childbirth or pregnancy. More than 40 per cent of deaths are caused by preventable complications.

Working with the Afghan Ministry of Public Health UNICEF set out to reduce the maternal mortality rate by providing improved obstetric care facilities to women across the country. The focus of the UNICEF initiative was the upgrading of Afghanistan’s largest maternal health facility, Malalai Maternity Hospital in Kabul.

The courtyard entrance to Malalai Maternity Hospital, Kabul, Afghanistan.

David Potter, a British architect based in Kathmandu, Nepal, went to Afghanistan to carry out a consultancy mission for UNICEF. His company, APON (Architectural Projects Office Nepal), specialises in designing affordable community medical stores and clinics in the difficult hill terrain and mountain regions of Nepal. The main subject of his work in Afghanistan was Kabul’s busy Malalai Maternity Hospital.

“When I first arrived in Afghanistan most Afghan hospitals were in a dire condition, due more to poor design, overcrowding and lack of maintenance than war damage” he said. “At each hospital I sketched survey plans and scanned them into my computer. I tried to put these scans into my mission report but I found that in raster format they were too big, difficult to annotate and displayed very slowly on my PC”.

Potter used Scan2CAD to convert the scans of his sketched surveys into DXF for editing in AutoCAD. “This produced much smaller files that allowed me to use all of AutoCAD’s CAD drawing and editing tools on them. I was able to annotate and add proposed alterations and new extensions with ease. Another great benefit was that I could use the AutoCAD Stretch function to resize parts of the plans where later measurement showed that what I had sketched was badly out of size”.

David converted his paper sketches using Scan2CAD

Raster to vector conversion is seldom, if ever, perfect. Good results are determined largely by the quality of the paper drawing and its scanned image. As a result some scans cannot be vectorized with any benefit to the user. Chief among these offending scans are weak and fuzzy photocopies (of photocopies) and drawings which are so scaled down that no clear detail is apparent. Images like this cannot vectorize well. This was Potter’s experience at one Afghan hospital which was too big for him to survey in the limited time he had.

“Luckily I was able to get a much-scaled-down photocopy of a fairly accurate floor plan. However, the quality of the print was very unclear and impossible to convert well. My solution was to trace over the plan by hand with a Rotring pen, then scan it and clean the scanned image to increase its sharpness” Potter said.

“Once I had a crisp scanned image I vectorized it with Scan2CAD. I then imported the resulting DXF file into AutoCAD where I was able to tidy it up, set the correct scale and add room names and my extension design proposals for improvements to the hospital building” Potter said.

Potter’s surveys allowed essential redevelopment work to commence almost immediately. Malalai Maternity Hospital now deals with 200 cases per day and is the largest and busiest maternity hospital in Afghanistan. UNICEF and its partners have upgraded the hospital, equipped new delivery rooms, operating theatres and ante-natal care rooms and provided a comprehensive training programme for obstetricians and midwives.

Malalai Maternity Hospital is now the first Centre of Excellence in Maternal Health in the Afghanistan.

The “Animals Always” sculpture assembled in Attica, NY

Celebrated American metal sculptor Albert Paley used Scan2CAD raster to vector conversion software to transform hundreds of paper patterns of animals and plants into CNC profiles for his imposing, new 100-ton Cor-ten weathered steel sculpture, “Animals Always”, at the St Louis Zoo, MO.

“Animals Always” is the world’s largest public zoo sculpture. It contains more than 60 recognizable animals, including elephants, penguins, giraffes and a giant salamander, as well as exotic vegetation. Measuring 130 feet long, 36 feet high and 8 feet deep, the sculpture sits in a new plaza and dominates the zoo’s southeast corner, making a welcoming new entrance to the St Louis Zoo and Forest Park.

“It’s about how we relate to a threatened environment,” said Paley, now arguably America’s foremost forged metal sculptor. Paley is celebrated worldwide for his inventive approach to form development and metal technique. He is currently a Distinguished Professor holding the Charlotte Fredericks Mowris endowed chair at the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Paley developed the original design concept for “Animals Always” over 20 years ago. The current design is the result of an inspirational architectural tour of St Louis and from working closely with St Louis Zoo authorities and others to develop the concept over the last three years. The scale and involvement of the St Louis Zoo sculpture is the largest and most complex project of his prolific career.

“I’m glad to be associated with the zoo which is involved with many international programs to save endangered species,” Paley said. “I went to zoos ­ including the Seneca Park Zoo ­ and drew a lot of animals. The challenge was personalizing these animal designs. I love challenges, but this has been a huge undertaking”.

Original cardboard scale model of Paley Studios’ Animals Always sculpture

Working initially from paper sketches Paley used these to create cardboard models for the fabrication of the sculpture. Animals Always” has more than 1,300 parts. The cardboard models alone took Paley six months. His problem lay in converting the cardboard models into computer images which could be cut from steel plate.

Paley’s construction method started with a representative drawing which was broken down into drawings of each element. These were then transferred to cardboard to construct a scale model. The inefficiency of working with paper patterns in today’s computer and CNC environment led the studio to recognize that the use of CAD could offer significant benefits. For example, as CAD files the patterns can be scaled up or down as required, then cut directly from steel. But before they could get the advantages of using CAD files they first had to get the artist’s existing hand sketches and patterns into AutoCAD for editing. This is where Scan2CAD provided a practical solution.

Using Scan2CAD

Scan2CAD is a raster to vector converter that turns scanned raster images into DXF files suitable for editing in any PC CAD program. After evaluating various products Paley Studios chose Scan2CAD as “it seemed to do the best job of converting our scanned images saved as TIFF files into DXF. We hired an AutoCAD technician and he learned Scan2CAD very quickly” said Robert Chan, the project manager.

Chan had two requirements for Scan2CAD. The first was that its DXF files had to be a close match to the artist’s scanned hand sketch; the second was that the converted hand sketches should need as little tidying-up in AutoCAD as possible. By first creating good quality scans of the sketches Paley Studios were able to follow a set raster to vector conversion procedure in Scan2CAD that ensured good results.

Scan2CAD met Chan’s requirements. It successfully converted the animal and plant profiles into a tight-fitting DXF file made up from lines, polylines (joined lines and arcs) or Bezier curves (which can be exported to AutoCAD as splines, polylines or arcs). A significant, unexpected benefit accrued to Paley Studios from of their use of Scan2CAD to produce AutoCAD files. In addition to supplying their steel supplier with patterns as CAD files they can now quickly resize any pattern to produce a Cor-ten steel scale model of whatever they are designing.

Plant silhouette as drawn by the artist, scanned and saved as a raster TIF file and opened in Scan2CAD ready for raster to vector conversion.

“Scan2CAD has greatly increased our flexibility to control our patterns. Now, each piece can be burned to our specifications or modified without having to recreate the paper pattern and pay for extra time on the burn table. Our integration of Scan2CAD raster to vector conversion technology with AutoCAD has developed time and cost saving factors which Paley Studios will use well into the future,” said Chan.

About Albert Paley

Albert Paley made his name initially as an art jeweler in New York. In 1969 he moved to Rochester, New York to teach at the Rochester Institute. With the recognition he earned from the Renwick Gallery “Portal Gates” for the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, 1974, he switched to metal sculpture and decorative arts. Since 1974 Paley has completed over 50 major corporate and civic commissions. In 1995 he was awarded the AIA (American Institute of Architects) coveted Institute Honors Award for his integration of art and architecture.

Paley employs 12 full-time people including fabricators, project planners, archivists and administrators in his Rochester, NY, studio. He and his staff work in a variety of metalworking disciplines. Paley produces the designs and takes a key role in the construction of his sculptures.

For further details on Albert Paley and his work, please see www.albertpaley.com.

About “Animals Always” and St Louis Zoo

The “Animals Always” sculpture was unveiled on 25th May 2006.

The edges and corners of the sculpture are burnished so that every surface is safe to touch.

The entire “Animals Always” piece was fabricated at Paley Studios in Rochester, NY, and shipped 800 miles by road to St Louis. It caused something of a sensation along the way.

The height of “Animals Always” is equivalent to the combined height of two giraffes.
The width of “Animals Always” is equivalent to three hippos standing shoulder to shoulder.
The length of “Animals Always” is equivalent to 19 sea lions.
The weight of “Animals Always” is equivalent to 143 grizzly bears.

For further details on “Animals Always” and St Louis Zoo, see: https://www.stlzoo.org/home/featurednews/animalsalwayssculpture.htm.

Albert Paley with a rhino that Scan2CAD converted from scanned outline to AutoCAD DXF. (Photo credit: St Louis Zoo.)

The Gosford Campus of the TAFE NSW Hunter Institute has purchased a 50+ Seat Lab Licence of Scan2CAD raster to vector conversion software. © Paul Ricardo.

A 50+ User Lab Licence of Scan2CAD Pro raster to vector conversion software has been purchased by the TAFE (Technical and Further Education) NSW Hunter Institute, the largest trainer of apprentices and trainees in the Hunter and Central Coast region of Australia. It will allow the TAFE to cost-effectively instruct part-time CAD students in the basics of automatic vectorization of scanned documents.

The Scan2CAD Lab Licence will be used on the Gosford Campus, the NSW Hunter Institute’s southernmost campus. Gosford Campus has been an Australian centre of excellence in CAD training since it introduced its first CAD training courses in response to the demands of local industry for the then “new art” of CADD – Computer Aided Drafting and Design. With CAD now an essential skill in Australian AEC, GIS, civil, electrical and mechanical engineering, mining and other industrial design practices, the demand for training remains as strong as ever today.

At any one time, the TAFE NSW Hunter Institute has over 11,000 apprentices and trainees in training programmes. Since first introducing a CAD training course, Gosford Campus has trained thousands of part-timers new to CAD who are learning a trade, as well as mature students learning to migrate from a manual drawing board to a CAD system. Among the CAD software products covered are AutoCAD, Inventor and Revit, as well as Scan2CAD, of course. While the college is most skilled in mechanical applications, like Mechanical Engineering and Metal Fabrication & Welding, it nevertheless teaches CAD skills at all levels to students in a multitude of design disciplines, from architecture to building, civils, clothing, communications, electrical, electronics, interior design, landscape, marine, mining, surveying, town planning, etc.

“The applications for CAD seem to be limitless” said Paul Ricardo, a teacher of Mechanical Engineering.

One of the component subjects in these courses is the digitizing and scanning and automatic raster to vector conversion of a variety of paper-based technical drawings into CAD-editable DXF files suitable for importing into CAD programs, like AutoCAD.

In meeting the vectorization needs of this course, Gosford Campus staff evaluated a number of raster to vector converters over the years. They found Softcover’s Scan2CAD to be intuitive and easy to use. As a result, Softcover was approached by Paul Ricardo in 2008. “We have used the Scan2CAD demo version for some time just to demonstrate to students the principle of raster to vector conversion”, he said. “Do Softcover supply Scan2CAD Educational Lab Licences?” he asked. “We do!” was the answer. In fact, over the 15 years we have sold Scan2CAD we have supplied a many educational institutions with copies of it a special prices designed to allow affordable group training.

The CAD room at Gosford Campus. © Paul Ricardo.

Paul told us that the Gosford Campus had a need for a cost-effective Scan2CAD Lab Licence which would allow it to be used for just a few weeks each 6 month semester in a subject covering the digitizing and scanning of technical drawings. He said Gosford Campus required a total of 48 Scan2CAD seats for classroom teaching purposes and five to install on teachers’ office PCs, a total of 53 Scan2CAD licences. We were very happy to oblige and to assist in the raster to vector conversion training of a new generation of CAD users. After contacting Softcover to discuss the details and the cost of a Scan2CAD Lab Licence, Gosford TAFE was supplied with a 50+ Lab Licence of Scan2CAD.

“This type of program is not what every student will need to use in industry but I do know of students that have purchased Scan2CAD because they have used it in class” said Paul. Indeed, so do we!

Parc Dudley sign design in Scan2CAD (left) and the final result

The Signs Workshop takes your sign from an idea to a router layout and converts it into a sign you can be proud of.

“Scan2CAD is in daily use and is an essential tool in our efforts to make the very best routed signs available” – Richard Withers.

The Signs Workshop is a small rural business which is a leading UK specialist in the manufacture of quality routed, environmentally friendly wooden signs.

“I think we purchased Scan2CAD in the early 90s” said Stephen Baughn, a director of The Signs Workshop. “I seem to remember the first version we had was on floppy discs.”

The Signs Workshop was part of the Forest Enterprise when it first purchased Scan2CAD. So useful has Scan2CAD proven to be that the Signs Workshop has upgraded to every new release. Now, due to an increase in the number of drawings it receives in the increasingly popular PDF file format, the Signs Workshop has upgraded to the latest Scan2CAD v8 which offers an inexpensive but comprehensive raster, vector and hybrid PDF to CAD conversion capability. It now runs two copies of Scan2CAD Pro on a network.

Based in the forested hills at Coed y Brenin in Gwynedd, north-west Wales, UK, The Signs Workshop has years of experience in the production of a wide range of distinctive timber signs which incorporate complicated logos and colour schemes. It produces grand entrance signs for country parks, house signs, information boards, finger posts, mileposts and way markers, as well as bespoke wooden products and recreational outdoor furniture in a variety of timbers and styles. The signs are manufactured in softwood (Douglas fir) and hardwood (Oak) from sustainable resources.

The Signs Workshop is proud of its “green” credentials. It is fully accredited by the Forest Stewardship Council and achieves a carbon neutral effect by practising sustainable woodland management. Its timber-routed signs are tailor-made to suit local requirements in environmentally sensitive locations where metal or plastic may not be appropriate. It is a long-term supplier to the Forestry Commission and includes among its clients the Countryside Council, RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds), local government authorities, as well as corporate and private organizations.

Richard Withers explains how Scan2CAD has assisted this company over the years. “Not long after we started producing signs we realized the need for a system for converting sketches and photographs into vector files we could work with in Licom router software. Clients would come to us with rough pictures or indistinct logos on business cards and ask ‘can you make a sign of this?’ We looked at various types of vectorization software, all costing a lot more than Scan2CAD, and were very surprised that Scan2CAD equalled or outperformed them at a fraction of the price. We’ve stuck with it ever since.

“Scan2CAD is in daily use and is an essential tool in our efforts to make the very best routed signs available” said Richard.

A leading US risk management and insurance company recently became our largest US user of Scan2CAD raster to vector conversion software. This company (it’s their policy to remain anonymous) first contacted us because they needed to replace their existing Preditor raster editing software.

Their main interest in Scan2CAD at that time was not automatic raster to vector conversion but raster cleanup and editing. They told us that Scan2CAD and a very expensive “intelligent Raster Editor” were on their short-list. Ultimately they decided to buy Scan2CAD raster to vector conversion software because, they said, the other program “does more than we need and costs more than we’re prepared to pay”.

The insurance company has around 350,000 facilities and building plan drawings in various formats with new projects arriving at a rate of up to 500 a week. Using Preditor all changes to these drawings were made on the scanned raster image. The alternative was to redraw the drawings by hand in full or in part. By purchasing Scan2CAD they received an up-to-date raster editing capability and gained the benefit of automatic raster to vector conversion which allowed them to quickly vectorize all or part of a drawing.

Some parts of the drawings – such as fire equipment, sprinkler systems, power points and hazards – are critically important and need to be converted into a vector format suitable for editing in the insurance company’s MicroGDS CAD program. As they wanted to see the raster image in MicroGDS while working on the vector file they asked us to add a new feature to Scan2CAD – the ability to export a DXF file with attached raster data. This was a practical suggestion which would be of great benefit to other Scan2CAD users as well.

We added it for them. Now, when paper drawings arrive they can be scanned into a raster format. Scan2CAD will clean up the raster image and convert all or whatever part is needed into DXF. The converted vector file with its attached scanned image is then exported to the vector world of MicroGDS where the vector data can be seen against the raster image and edited.

“You folks continue to make me feel good about our decision to go with Scan2CAD. I have been impressed not only with the software but the way you do business and work in partnership with your customers” says TG (Assistant Vice President – CAD/GIS Department Manager). “One of the best features of Scan2CAD is its simplicity, and the raster to vector conversion that you have developed is the best we’ve seen from anyone (and we’ve been looking for over 20 years!)”.

RW (CAD Supervisor, Engineering Plan Services Dept) writes: “I received a color PDF from a client. As it was PDF’d directly from CAD it was of very good quality. When I saved it as TIFF within Acrobat it resulted in a 363 Mb file at 200 dpi. Scan2CAD was able to open the TIFF and reduce the colors from 16.7 million to 8 in a few minutes. I then used the View/Edit Palette feature to ensure that some of the lighter colors that needed to be saved were converted to black. Then I reduced the color depth to 1-bit. I selected the Site Plan option under Type, tweaked a couple of settings, hit the VEC button and had a near perfect vector translation in a few seconds. My guess is that we reduced the total project time by nearly a day on something that would normally take about 32 hours to create from scratch”.

We will add features to Scan2CAD raster to vector conversion software on the request of any user, however large or small, so long as the feature is one that will be of use to other users as well. Please let us know what you need!

Bob Baldwin’s beautiful and unusual kitchen cabinet doors, created with the help of Scan2CAD raster to vector conversion software. © Bob Baldwin.

In his previous job as the senior designer for a big cabinet company, Bob Baldwin had always felt that there was room for more innovation in cabinet design. He is now pursuing his vision. With the help of Scan2CAD raster to vector conversion software Bob is giving life to his own kitchen cabinet designs.

“Little is being done in cabinetry in general and kitchen design in particular that wasn’t around 40 years ago” says Bob. As an example, he cites door panels that remain much the same in their choice of wood species and finishes. “There was some innovation about 20 years ago with what we call European style cabinetry in the USA but other than not having face frames and offering white cabinets, it’s really not a huge change” he says.

In Bob’s contemporary kitchen designs, cabinet doors become a canvas for his art. “I want to use flat panel doors to bring color, shape, and design into the kitchen” he says.

“Imagine a flowering vine snaking its way across the upper cabinet doors, or a flock of birds or butterflies or clouds or a garden scene on the base cabinets or a colorful landscape. This is not being done, and I think it should be. It would bring color into the kitchen and make every kitchen unique. Instead of painting or printing such scenes, I want to use inlayed stained wood veneers to make art with a more permanent feel than most disposable kitchen designs. The wood grain would add to the effect.”

Bob uses solid bamboo flat panels for the doors and drawer fronts because bamboo is not an endangered wood species, unlike some of the exotic tropical woods, and because its fine grain acts as a non-intrusive backdrop for his designs’ inlays.

The conversion of Bob’s free-flowing artistic designs into veneer inlays presented him with a problem. Like many CNC operators using a variety of cutting machines today, Bob simply wanted to draw a design, take a digital photo of it and then have his CNC router do the rest. Bob thought he would find a CAM product to do this. “There isn’t one” he says. “In my search, I populated CNC chat rooms with numerous questions asking if anyone knew how to do what I wanted. The general consensus was that it was not do-able – which explains why it wasn’t being done. This thrilled me – I love a challenge!”

Determined to automate the process, Bob looked to raster to vector conversion software as a solution. After a disappointing experience with another product, Bob downloaded the Scan2CAD Trial. He quickly decided that “Scan2CAD is better”. During his Scan2CAD trial period he received technical support from Softcover’s Andrea Tribe. Scan2CAD enjoys growing success in the CNC and CAD/CAM market. Her knowledge of vectorizing shapes for CNC and CAD/CAM applications gave Bob the start he needed. “Andrea provided good support” he said. “She was patient, knowledgeable and responsive”.

After discussing his requirement by email, Bob decided to follow Andrea’s advice and use a sharp, fine point black pen to trace around the marquetry outlines instead of photographing them. This allowed Scan2CAD to vectorize the defined line detail that was drawn to the correct scale and aspect ratio.

One of Bob Baldwin’s designs as a line drawing

“I’m getting great vectors now” Bob emailed Andrea, but worried that “they don’t show up in my Vectrics VCarvePro CAM program”.

The non-appearance of Bob’s vectors was not due to any limitation in the Scan2CAD 7 day full-working evaluation. Rather, it was because many CNC programs, including Bob’s Vectrics VCarvePro, do not support the importation of Bezier curves, something he had used at Andrea’s recommendation because they give a smooth fit to free-flowing, organic outlines. However, before such a vectorized DXF file can be exported into a CNC program, the tight-fitting bezier curves must first be saved as arcs if the DXF file is to be successfully read into most CNC machines. Once Bob had saved his Bezier curves as arcs, he was pleased to see his artistic designs appear as vector data in his Vectrics VCarvePro CAM program for the first time.

Scan2CAD raster to vector conversion software has provided Bob with a practical solution, one which many in the CNC community said did not exist and could not be done.

Bob now proposes to produce his designs as doors which can be fitted to any standard size of kitchen cabinet. “Cabinet boxes are large and hard to ship,” he says, “but cabinet doors aren’t. Also, cabinet boxes are all the same – you can hang just about any door on them. That means that I can ship my door design anywhere, and they can be installed on someone else’s cabinets. I intend to sell from a website and never have to leave my shop to do installations”.

For over 28 years Sanders Reproduction Glass of Vancouver, WA, has provided the US restoration and hot rod community with quality reproduction vintage auto glass for a wide range of discontinued automobiles, from classics of the US motor industry’s heyday, like Buick, Cadillac, Edsel and Studebaker, to more recent foreign imports, like Volkswagens and Volvos.

To meet this demand Sanders Reproduction Glass have about 8000 automobile window patterns supporting 30 different domestic and over 36 foreign auto makers between 1925 and 1965. Whether it’s from their inventory of pre-cut windows or cut to order from their huge selection of original patterns, Sanders Reproduction Glass have assisted thousands of customers with their automobile restoration or custom project.

“We produce OEM glass windshields, door windows, vent windows, quarter windows and back or back light windows. To please the perfectionist we use only superior quality 1/4″ laminated safety glass (AS1 CAT-II)” says Sanders Reproduction Glass’ Managing Partner, Tyler Phillis.

To improve the service on offer Tyler decided to modernize Sanders Reproduction Glass’ window production by investing in a new waterjet cutter capable of cutting glass to fit. Water jet cutters are versatile machine tools that use a jet of water or a mixture of water and an abrasive substance to cut through metal and other materials at high velocity and pressure. A waterjet cutter held out the promise of productivity benefits by cutting virtually any shape in a single step with edge quality that usually requires no secondary finishing.

The waterjet which Sanders Reproduction Glass purchased was a Flow International WaterjetPRO 1313 with an X-Y-Z working envelope of 48 x 48 x 8 inches. With an intensifier pump that produces pressure up to 60,000 pounds per square inch, the WaterjetPRO 1313 is capable of slicing through a wide range of materials from 1/16 inch to several inches thick. Auto glass represents no obstacle to the WaterjetPRO’s cutting power. For cutting auto glass, the WaterjetPRO requires an abrasive material be introduced into the high pressure water stream.

In early 2007, Tyler began to scan the OEM auto glass patterns to file for the purpose of creating an archive from which to convert them into a format suitable for a CNC machine. By mid-2007, in advance of the waterjet cutter’s arrival and installation, he began to investigate the best way to convert the scans into DXF or NC code. Tyler downloaded a trial version of Scan2CAD raster to vector conversion software to test. Due to the size of the OEM patterns, 24 inches wide and 240 inches long, they were scanned at 72 dpi on a drafting grade, large format scanner capable of handling long pattern rolls.

Softcover expressed concern to Tyler that 72 dpi was usually far too low a resolution to give raster to vector conversion software the necessary level of detail to work with and obtain useful results. However, in this instance, Softcover’s reservations proved unfounded. Test conversions of the OEM auto glass patterns yielded good results. However, before Tyler bought Scan2CAD, he wanted to see Scan2CAD convert multiple scans automatically in a Batch mode. Softcover, who provide free technical support to both users and trial version evaluators, were quick to help.

Softcover’s Andrea Tribe wrote a short Command Line program for Tyler to run with his Scan2CAD Trial program. This allowed him to make multiple conversions to size and scale to his satisfaction. As a result, Tyler subsequently purchased Scan2CAD Pro. (For more information about Scan2CAD’s powerful Command file programming solutions, go to the Help Menu, choose Contents and then choose Command Line Options).

“I regularly use Scan2CAD and very much like the results I get from it” says Tyler. “I most like the ability to control the scale and the ability to do a lot of conversions at once. Andrea was very helpful in providing a Command Line program for batch mode scaling. As a result, our use of Scan2CAD raster to vector conversion definitely saves time. The conversion takes only seconds to complete – the batch mode is “fire and forget”. It allows me to complete other tasks as it runs. I’d characterize Scan2CAD as on my “critical path” from customer order to final product.”

Because no raster to vector conversion program offers perfect results, the DXF vector files invariably need to be tidied up first before the NC code can be generated. Originally Tyler’s unfamiliarity with Scan2CAD led him to make most of the DXF vector edits in FlowMaster. However, now that he has had more time to use Scan2CAD, he has discovered an easy way to do this in Scan2CAD with the vector image over the raster one.

“Recently, I’ve explored the features of Scan2CAD and am now doing 99% of the editing in it rather than the Flow software. It’s sped me up and improved my accuracy. Being able to edit the vector file directly on top of the original raster image has improved the accuracy of each conversion. I’m now able to complete the vector file to my satisfaction in Scan2CAD and only use the Flow software to set the cutting speed and nest the work.”

With an auto glass profile safely and speedily converted to the correct size and scale and saved as vector DXF, Tyler opens this up in his waterjet’s FlowMaster software. After final editing in FlowMaster, the file containg the auto glass shape is finally profiled into NC code to control the cutting bed. “As far as I know, Sanders Reproduction Glass is the only flat glass window manufacturer in the US doing this” he says.

“I use four software packages to complete the task of producing NC code. On average, it takes only about 10 minutes to do this. The majority of the time is spent editing and smoothing the image in Scan2CAD (which only needs to be done once for each pattern). From there it takes only a few minutes to cut the prepared window patterns. I will explore other features of Scan2CAD more fully in the future. I am very happy with it. I’m sure as time passes and I explore more features, I’ll get more out of Scan2CAD than I already do!” Tyler says.

Sanders Reproduction Glass, LLC
Vancouver, WA 98682, USA.
www.sandersreproglass.com

Photo credits:
The American Dream: William Attard Mccarthy | Dreamstime.com.
Waterjet photos: Tyler Phillis.

Tree converted by Scan2CAD raster to vector conversion software for the Washington National Opera’s production of Die Walkure, with Placido Domingo as Siegmund in the foreground.

“Scan2CAD saved me days of work or hundreds of dollars in someone else’s drafting time” – Christy Blackham, Associate Technical Director.

In 1956, the sound of opera heralded the birth of a new opera company in Washington, DC. Today, after 52 seasons, the Washington National Opera is not only one of the USA’s leading opera companies but also one of its most prolific production companies, offering 50+ performances of seven to eight operas per season. Each opera represents a considerable production challenge.

Like any business with a demanding schedule and a range of products, the Washington National Opera needs to keep its costs low while increasing productivity. While the outward signs of its success are the glamorous stars on stage, it is the unseen workers in the wings who toil to make the company more productive. Among the tools they use are AutoCAD and Scan2CAD raster to vector conversion software.

Christy (Dilts) Blackham, Associate Technical Director, Washington National Opera had the responsibility of building a new set for the Spring 2007 season’s opening production of Wagner’s Die Walkure. Like any production process, building stage scenery is seldom straightforward. Among her production problems was the creation of the outline of a huge tree that would occupy center stage.

Blackham described the set-building process as “usually starting with paper drawings”. Cue Scan2CAD!

“In theater, and especially opera, the process usually goes like this” she said. “A designer, in this case recent Tony Award winner Michael Yeargan, builds a model of what he wants the set to look like. Then, they may or may not do some hand draftings of individual set pieces. It’s then the company’s job to put this information into a format that is easily distributed to scenery shops for the bid process. We don’t send out reams of paper. Instead, we convert all of the hand draftings into AutoCAD DWG files.

“Usually, this means hours of tracing for some poor draftsman. When the pieces are structural and square like walls or platforms, this process isn’t a big deal” Blackham said. Some shapes, however, are much more difficult to draw as DWG files.

The original tree artwork, © Michael Yeargan.

“When this tree (from Die Walkure) crossed my desk, I thought I might go blind tracing it. Its organic shape made it an obvious candidate for the CNC router that most shops that we use have, but someone was going to have to convert it to a digital format first. If I did it, that would save the company the money of having the shop do the drafting, but I was not looking forward to the days it would take me to do”.

The solution, she said, was “Scan2CAD to the rescue. In an afternoon, I had the Die Walkure tree converted into an acceptable file for the router. Scan2CAD saved me days of work or hundreds of dollars in someone else’s drafting time.”

She believes that Scan2CAD raster to vector conversion software provided the Washington National Opera with a quick and efficient solution to her problem of getting complex, hand-drawn artwork into a vector format for editing in AutoCAD and or cutting on a CNC machine.

The Washington National Opera’s use of Scan2CAD is very similar to that of Albert Paley, the leading US metal sculptor. Paley used Scan2CAD to scan and convert hundreds of organic profiles for cutting on a CNC machine. Once cut, Paley welded these into an awesome and impressive new entrance way “Animals Always” statue for St Louis Zoo. See: Scan2CAD used in “Animals Always” sculpture by Albert Paley.

Scan2CAD raster to vector conversion software is the new vectorizing front-end for Deskan FastParts, a reverse engineering CNC solution based on the Deskan scanner.

Scan2CAD raster to vector conversion software is the new vectorizing front-end for Deskan FastParts, a reverse engineering CNC solution based on the Deskan scanner.

Earlier this year we were contacted by Ian Ferrier, managing director of Shapemakers, an Australian sign and CNC company based in Brisbane, Queensland. His company manufactures an A0 large format colour scanning system called the Deskan Color Express 6 which we had first seen in 2001 when we were demonstrating Scan2CAD at the AEC Systems show in Chicago.

The Deskan 6 offers users an affordable and unique way to capture large format scans. It uses an A4 motorised scanner head to capture drawings up to A0 or E-size in strips. Each strip is individually scanned and saved, automatically corrected for distortion and joined by stitching software that recognises special control points. It is slow but cost-effective, less than half the price of an entry-level A0 scanner.

Ferrier has developed a solution based on the Deskan scanner for CNC companies who need to reproduce profiles and shapes fast. “In Australia”, Ferrier said, “people in the business of reverse engineering CNC components seem to like what the Deskan has to offer”.

Deskan FastParts eliminates time consuming hand measuring and redrawing by automatically scanning and converting old gaskets, drawings and seals, etc., into ready-to-cut DXF files in as little as five minutes. Deskan FastParts can scan items like gaskets up to 1180 x 870mm in size and, using a custom built table, up to 200mm thick. It provides CNC operators with an affordable and reliable scan-to-vector solution for reverse engineering parts quickly and cost-effectively into DXF vectors for editing in CAD and or cutting on a CNC machine for accurate reproduction.

Ferrier sees his scanner’s future in scan-to-vector solutions like Deskan Fastparts. But first he needed a raster to vector converter.

“The Deskan doesn’t have a vectorizing feature and I did not want to create one. I wanted to source a well-priced converter that does the job for people with a limited degree of skill and understanding of the vectorizing process. It needed to be foolproof and capable of creating cutting files with a minimum of clean up. We tried bundling the Deskan with other raster to vector converters. All of them were OK but none were outstanding” he said.

As Ferrier had customers with copies of Scan2CAD raster to vector conversion software who spoke highly of it, he evaluated it. “I liked what I saw” he said. After satisfying himself that Softcover gave good technical support on Scan2CAD, Ferrier asked us if we were interested in marrying our software with his Deskan FastParts. What a question! So, we are now pleased to announce that Scan2CAD is the new vectorizing front-end for Deskan FastParts.

“Any business that has to duplicate or reverse engineer CNC parts will find our Deskan Fastparts an asset. It allows users to scan a component up to A0 in size, vectorize the part and cut it out by machine quickly and easily with minimal knowledge of both processes. Combined with Scan2CAD it’s a great scanning system for rapid reverse enginering of CNC parts, one we plan to market aggressively” said Ferrier.

Irish archaeologists clean up a section of an Iron Age trackway. © Aisling Mulcahy.

In a previous article we described the success which Arthur Batty of the Ingleborough Archaeology Group enjoyed using Scan2CAD raster to vector conversion software on the Kingsdale Head Project. We concluded by highlighting some of the difficulties which Aisling Mulcahy, a project manager and GIS technician for an Irish archaeological company, was having using Scan2CAD to convert some less-than-ideal scanned images which had been hand-drawn on-site into CAD files.

Aisling has evaluated several automatic raster to vector converters. She described Scan2CAD as “the best” of the vectorization programs which she had looked at. However, she still required some further advice to questions she had about using it more effectively with her hand-drawn plans. Most of these had been produced on-site, often in damp or poor weather conditions. In Ireland, she says “we have a phrase – ‘workable rain’. You can imagine what this means…”

One feature of her drawings was dirt which needed to be removed from the drawing during or after scanning. Another was that her well-executed and attractive pencil drawings had been saved as a JPG file. Unfortunately the combination of soft pencil lines, a JPG file’s quality reduction, poor and variable foreground / background contrast, blurry lines and complex drawing elements with ambiguous paths made her original scan largely unsuitable for automatic raster to vector conversion.

We suggested to her that she use Arthur Batty’s method of making a copy, then inking over the original and scanning that. This would provide sharp lines in black on a white background, ideal for Scan2CAD to get its teeth into.

The complexity of Aisling’s finely detailed drawing of an ancient Irish cemetery made redrawing a time-consuming task. Undaunted, she used a transparent acetate sheet and a fine marker to trace over all the detail and scanned it again. This time, she said “the results I got from Scan2CAD were excellent.” Scan2CAD’s vectorization was quick but the time it took her to redraw all the detail and then edit the vectorized results in AutoCAD made her decide that this method was impractical.

Nevertheless, Aisling persisted with the use of Scan2CAD. By adapting the settings she learned over time how to improve the quality of Scan2CAD’s results. As she got better results, her comments on the quality of vectorization ranged from “OK, just small tweaking afterwards” to “good, just small edits to be done afterward” to even a “perfect, almost zero editing required”.

Having now used Scan2CAD on several projects Aisling is able to comment knowledgeably on it use.

The Irish archaeologist at work drawing hand plans on site – on a nice day! © TVAS (Ireland) Ltd.

“Scan2CAD works best on clean plans with single pencil lines. If plans are smudged or unclear, the programme draws what it can and the result can be geometric shapes which are not what is desired. Also, if there are multiple pencil lines overlacing other detail, the programme draws all of these. The vertices of the lines can be difficult to disentangle during editing.However, these problems (and their solutions) are the realm of the archaeologist, not of the computer program.

“The software can work to its limits but it cannot distinguish which line to draw and which to ignore… It is not a magician!”

Sharp, clean drawing detail is ideally what all raster to vector converters, not just Scan2CAD, need in order to give a good result. Aisling now accepts that Scan2CAD had a less than perfect start with some of her on-site drawings.

She recommends to other archaeolgists who might have a similar need to use Scan2CAD that “if the weather and working conditions permit, it is time and cost-effective to attempt to draw clean plans. Most of the plans which worked best for me with Scan2CAD were those which were produced in the site office – out of the elements. While it may sound discouraging that Scan2CAD will not vectorize every site plan perfectly, it is still a very useful tool. If it is useful for half the plans, then it is useful!

“I have worked with the settings in Scan2CAD and now get a very good vectorization” she said.

Drawing of a stone foundation vectorized with Scan2CAD – “a good standard”! © Icon Archaeology Ltd.

Recently Aisling attempted to use Scan2CAD to vectorize drawings of site plans with stone foundations. One was a plan that vectorized perfectly requiring almost zero editing, “maybe five minutes” she added. The second was a different plan of the same site. This was smudged, resulting in unclear geometric shapes in the centre where the smudging was the worst. Even so, Aisling said that “Scan2CAD vectorized both wood and stone to a good standard. The stone, in particular, takes a LONG time to draw manually. It is a tedious job drawing each stone and cobble!”

Hand drawing of a section of Iron Age wooden trackway. © TVAS (Ireland) Ltd.

The first part of Aisling’s reference to “both wood and stone” refers to an impressive excavation of what she describes as “basically an Iron Age motorway”. Excavated in 2007, the wooden trackway comprised complex timbers dating from approximately 40BC, making it over 2000 years old. Preserved by the peat of the bog, the trackway is a near perfect example of pre-historic, Iron Age Celtic civil engineering. It is probably one of the largest trackways ever found in northern Europe.

In northern Europe, a historically soggy patch of turf until drained by the modern civil engineer, the construction of ancient trackways across bogs has been a necessity for the last 6,000 years. Over 200 trackways have been found in Irish bogs. These are most commonly found in Counties Kildare, Leitrim, Galway, Longford, Meath, Offaly, Tipperary and Westmeath.

Aerial view of ancient Irish trackway – “an Iron Age motorway” – across the bogs! © Hawkeye.

In ancient times the Irish spent much energy and time building wooden tracks that would allow villagers a safe and easy passage across the bogs. In most places bogs could be crossed on foot, by jumping from one dry hummock to another, but on some occasions and during the wetter seasons of the year the bogs were both dangerous or impassable. As a result people made trackways from planks of wood or from thin branches that were woven together, to gain a safe and easy path across them.

The wooden trackway was built to cross a very deep bog, up to 16m in places, from a dry spit of land to a secure dry island. Brushwood and odd pieces of wood were placed in the wettest areas to create a foundation. Runners of birch were placed along the route of the trackway at spaced intervals. Over these were placed large split planks of oak, some up to 7m in length. Some of these planks had mortice joints at the ends and stakes were driven in to ground them. Stakes were placed at either side of the trackway and driven into the bog’s entire length to anchor it. As a bog is a moving entity, the trackway was effectively a floating road. Unless the trackways were constantly maintained and raised in level, sooner or later the growing bog buried them.

The final result – a Scan2CAD vectorized image of some of the planks in the trackway. © TVAS (Ireland) Ltd.

Pre-history’s rising bog levels and the trackways re-emergence today provides work for modern day Irish archaeologists. Scan2CAD was one of several software tools used to document the trackway. Hand drawings of the trackway wood were produced on site. These, said Aisling, would provide a good test of Scan2CAD’s capabilities as the wooden material used for the trackway necessitated that “artistic” lines are drawn to plan more effectively. “The Scan2CAD program handled even these” she said.

Aisling Mulcahy is currently working with two Irish archaeological companies, TVAS (Ireland) Ltd and Icon Archaeology Ltd. For more information on their work, see:

www.tvasireland.ie
www.iconarchaeology.ie

Arthur Batty (foreground) and colleagues from the Ingleborough Archaeology Group producing drawings on-site for the Kingsdale Head Project. © Arthur Batty IAG.

Unlike AEC drawings with their straight orthogonal lines and perfect arcs and circles, archaeological sketches are usually made as freehand drawings on-site in difficult conditions (rain, mud) using pencils (which can be too faint) or pens (which can be too thick and whose ink may bleed, thereby causing a loss of sharp drawing detail). The vectorization of these sketches can be difficult and require workarounds.

One archaeologist who has learned how to get useful results from Scan2CAD raster to vector conversion software is Arthur Batty of the IAG (Ingleborough Archaeology Group), winners of the Association for Industrial Archaeology Fieldwork and Recording Initiative Award 2007. Arthur found Scan2CAD helpful in preparing the IAG’s reports but not before learning what it needs in order to get useful results. He has learned that Scan2CAD reserves its best results for sharp, good quality drawings and scans.

Based in Ingleton, North Yorkshire, England, the IAG was formed in April 1996. It has about 40 members who research the history and prehistory of the Ingleborough District which lies within the scenic Yorkshire Dales. The IAG has conducted several archaeological excavations and investigations in this area in the last four years. One, the Sandymire Project, was an investigation into apparently ancient timbers which had been revealed by receding water levels. These showed evidence of Bronze Age axe work.

For the Kingsdale Head Project, the IAG investigated a rectangular feature discovered within the Yorkshire Dales National Park. This was believed to be Norse in origin. Using skills developed on previous projects, the IAG studied the area using a Penmap and geophysical, topographical and photographic surveys. A small scale excavation of a badly eroded area was undertaken in conjunction with experts from the University of Bradford. Once such a study is finished, the IAG analyse the information and publish the results.

Typical archaeolgical sketch produced on-site prior to re-inking and conversion with Scan2CAD. This is an ancient fire pit, a feature of a site uncovered by the IAG. © Arthur Batty IAG.

“When we first considered trying to create DXF files from our achaeological field drawings, we imported them into AutoCAD as a BMP raster file and then redrew all the lines” said Arthur. “This was not a very accurate way of achieving the desired results. It was also time-consuming. We looked around for a quicker, alternative method and decided to purchase Scan2CAD.

“The first problem we encountered” he said “was that the lines on the original field drawings were too faint and did not vectorize well. Our solution was to photocopy the originals, then ink over the lines on these copies. These were then scanned again and using Scan2CAD converted into DXF files with excellent results. This proved to be much faster and more effective than redrawing in AutoCAD. One benefit resulting from this method of working was that we also got a useful paper copy of the original site drawing for our archives.

The same image after photocopying, inking over the lines, rescanning, converting with Scan2CAD and editing in Adobe Illustrator. “Excellent results” says Arthur Batty. © Arthur Batty IAG.

“Once we had the DXF files, we imported them into Adobe Illustrator to remove handwritten notes and to add text and or more drawing detail. The result was a JPG file suitable for inserting into a publication and which was saved on CD for a digital archive. The recording of archaeological remains from several excavations from the last four years is now taking place. Scan2CAD has been used to vectorize the drawings on all projects. My method gives very good results ideal for publication in a reasonable period of time” Arthur said.

Just after we spoke to Arthur about this, we were contacted by Aisling Mulcahy, a project manager and GIS technician for an Irish archaeological company who had evaluated several raster to vector converters. She described Scan2CAD as “the best” of the ones she had looked at but she still required answers to some general questions about using Scan2CAD. Like Arthur’s, her plans were drawn on-site, also often in bad weather conditions. A feaure of her drawings was residual dirt which needed to be removed from the drawing during or after scanning.

Aisling sent us a JPG file of a well-executed and attractive pencil drawing. Unfortunately her scan was unsuitable for raster to vector conversion because of the poor and variable foreground / background contrast, blurry lines and drawing elements with ambiguous paths (see image and detail below).

Small section of a much larger pencil drawing of an excavated ancient Irish cemetery, with zoomed in view showing the faint and undefined nature of the lines. Lines like this cannot be converted using raster to vector conversion. © Aisling Mulcahy.

We mentioned Arthur Batty’s method of making a copy, then inking over the original and scanning that. However, an examination of Aisling’s very detailed drawing of an ancient Irish cemetery showed the complexity of inking over so much fine detail.

“As for Arthur’s suggestion,” she said, “I had the same idea. I used a transparent acetate sheet and a fine marker to trace over all the details first. After scanning this, the results I got from Scan2CAD were excellent”. However, due to the time it took to carefully trace all the detail and to edit the results in AutoCAD – the vectorization with Scan2CAD was the quickest part – Aisling decided that this method did not save enough time.

This all goes to show that raster to vector conversion requires a scan with strong, well-defined drawing detail. While freehand archaeological plans drawn in pencil under difficult conditions on-site are unlikely to always provide such a starting point, it is possible to use them to create a suitable scan either by inking in the original or tracing over the plan on acetate. Depending on the drawing (Arthur Batty’s but not Aisling Mulcahy’s), this can save considerable time.

Since this user story was written, Aisling Mulcahy has reported to us that she is now getting much better results from Scan2CAD. See Irish archaeologists use Scan2CAD to document Iron Age trackway.

Midland Diving Equipment are distributors and suppliers of watersports, snowsports and extreme sports equipment, clothing and accessories. Their showroom displays a variety of sub-aqua, diving, snorkelling, snowboarding, wakeboarding and surfing equipment, including power and surfing kites.

Founded in 1957, Midland Diving Equipment Ltd was initially a distributor of Bristol compressors. Since introducing their own Whirlwind range that has given excellent service to divers, fire brigades, the military and industry, they have become one of the UK’s foremost manufacturers and suppliers of diving equipment, high pressure valves, filtration, charging and pure air technology.

Since 1957 MDE’s equipment has been used by fire services, military and diving community.

In 1971 Midland Diving became the UK distributor of US Divers. This, combined with the development of their own MDE valves and manifolds, gave thousands of commercial, military, sport and leisure divers throughout the world the opportunity to use the finest equipment available. Expanding to larger premises in 1976, Midland Diving continued to diversify with the development of high pressure systems for racing teams, movie special effects companies and precharged airgun enthusiasts.

Roger Ellis, Midland Diving’s technical sales director, said “At that time we generated engineering drawings by the drawing board and technical pencil method. Today we have about 150 legacy drawings ranging in size from A4 up to A0 in size. We needed to transfer these somehow into digital files that could be modified by CAD software. This is where Scan2CAD came into play”.

By purchasing Scan2CAD raster to vector conversion software Midland Diving have been able to automatically convert scanned images of their technical drawings into DXF vector files for editing in their PC CAD program, in their case TurboCAD.

“To date we have converted about 15 to 20% of our drawings, mainly the smaller sized drawings. We have had a few teething problems as we have gone along but we have received invaluable help when needed from the Scan2CAD support team. I am not aware of any other software of this type that can do what Scan2CAD does at this price. I can thoroughly recommend Scan2CAD” said Ellis.

Alan Darbyshire with his Colortrac SmartLF A0 scanner.

Alan Darbyshire’s cheerful greeting welcomed many British CAD users to CADlogic’s booth at UK construction industry exhibitions. His long association with CADlogic ended recently when he started his own CAD services business in the scenic Peak District. Alan now provides training on AutoCAD and CADlogic’s AutoCAD architectural add-ons. He offers a “first quality” drafting service that recreates old drawings as new and a scanning and conversion service using a Colortrac SmartLF A0 scanner and Scan2CAD raster to vector conversion software. He recently won a contract to scan 10,000 drawings for a large UK electrical products manufacturer. He has done similar work for UK local authorities. “I am continually asked about scanning and vectorizing drawings into CAD” he says.

“I use Scan2CAD on every contract drafting job I do. As I am supposed to be redrafting a drawing from scratch my customers expect 100% first quality but to save myself time I use Scan2CAD to do 80% of the work and I do the rest, thus ensuring that the final results are perfect.

“The problem is that 99% of the drawings I get are copies, not originals. When I scan these poor quality copies and convert them in Scan2CAD the results are not as good as if I was working from the original master drawing. Fortunately, I’ve developed a way around this problem which has proved very useful when I’m redrawing a very messy DXF file.

“Once Scan2CAD has created the DXF file I import this into the CAD software. In my case, it’s AutoCAD. The method I use is as follows. I place the Scan2CAD DXF geometry onto a faint colored layer that I call ‘S2C’, dark gray if it’s on a black background. Then I create another layer, which I call ‘Trace’ and make this white. Next, I change all of the perfect geometry from the ‘S2C’ layer onto ‘Trace’. The easiest way to do this is to just select the ‘S2C’ entities, then pick the ‘Trace’ layer. This is a standard method of moving geometry form one layer to another in AutoCAD.

“Very quickly I am able to build up the detail required. Note that I am not drawing over the ‘S2C’ layer, simply changing it to the ‘Trace’ layer. I use AutoCAD’s Offset and Fillet Zero commands to tidy up and modify the Scan2CAD DXF file, plus I am able to ‘snap’ to the Scan2CAD geometry to add or tidy any items as required. I don’t have to start from a clean sheet in CAD. It is surprising how quickly I can build up the detail. Afterwards, I just delete the leftover entities on the ‘S2C’ layer using AutoCAD’s Properties ‘Funnel’ to search for all the ‘S2C’ entities.

“This method allows me to complete the drawing in around half the time it takes to redraw it from scratch. The result is an accurate drawing that I can email to my customer who can carry out his amendments in turn.

“When the master drawing is good and I scan it correctly, I have a lot less work to do afterwards. If you have an architectural drawing it is of paramount importance that you scan it in straight as this will affect the results you get. Yes, you can rotate a skew drawing in Scan2CAD but if you scan it in straight in the first place it will save you an additional step in the tidying-up process later on.

“Scan2CAD has saved me a lot of time and given me a rapid payback on my investment. It really does help me get my work done more quickly!”

For more information on Alan Darbyshire’s CAD Services see www.alandarbyshire.co.uk.