I need a CAD program which will easily convert a photo or a scanned art image to a line drawing in a DWG format. I will then send it to a local company for laser cnc or plasma cnc cutting.

I will need one which I can check the drawings after they are converted to be sure all the lines are connected and I can edit or delete unwanted lines so it is finished when I send it to my laser guy. Also with the program I want the ability to free hand sketch drawings. I am looking for a low cost program if possible for these art projects.

Thanks.

you are looking for raster to vector program, some allow drawing some don't and the quality depends how fine the color sperates, meaning a black and white art will make better lines than a shades color pic.

i use correl draw, but acad has a add on for this and depending on what quality you need you may have to draw the whole thing you want.

Adobe Illustrator. I am not the best with it, but it easily will "Export" to a DWG or DXF file format.

I have used it on an embedded Emboss Logo for machining and it worked far better then Mastercam's Art feature.

Mike in MN

http://www.cncbasics.com
http://www.cncbasicsforum.com
http://www.mastercamforum.com
http://www.mastercamblog.com

Photo VCarve from http://www.vectric.com

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Free...Inkscape
With this guy's plug-in, there are instructions for installing it found on the page provided in that link, and a couple of quick video tutorials found here.

I have done this with mastercam quite a few times. Just use the rast to vect and import your picture. I am not sure if it is still up or not but there was a video on waterjets.org of a guy giving a tutorial on how to do exactly this. Search for half life 2, he converts that logo into a mastercam drawing.

Here is a method using Corel Trace.
http://www.torchmate.com/assistance/convert.htm
Minder.