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scan in picture to cad drawing?

gorrilla

Stainless
Joined
May 2, 2007
Location
Central Texas, West and North of Austin
Pardon me if I'm imagining this, but didn't someone come out with a cad program that would convert a scanned-in drawing to a dimensionable cad drawing sometime in the past? I have a line on some work that would be much easier to program that way rather than try to replicate the arcs and radius that this involves by drawing from scratch. Basically converting art work to machined parts. Any ideas?
 
hi
you can use raster to vector software( illustrator, corel,inkscape,..) and import the dxf file in the cad software
but the problem is the accuracy of the result
 
I'm all ears...wanna write a tutorial?

-Jbot

It's in the help. look under sketch/sketch tools/sketch picture. Here's a little of what is says, there is a lot more info on it and what it can do.

Sketch Picture includes the following capabilities:

Insert pictures (.bmp, .gif, .jpg, .jpeg, .tif, .wmf) on a sketch plane.

Use pictures as an underlay for creating 2D sketches.

Convert raster data to vector data.
 
there a quite a few out on the web. do a search raster to vector and take your pic. i use correl draw, have used solidworks but don't get the quality.
 
excellent....

It's in the help. look under sketch/sketch tools/sketch picture. Here's a little of what is says, there is a lot more info on it and what it can do.

Sketch Picture includes the following capabilities:

Insert pictures (.bmp, .gif, .jpg, .jpeg, .tif, .wmf) on a sketch plane.

Use pictures as an underlay for creating 2D sketches.

Convert raster data to vector data.

Sweet...thanks. I've had a .jpg of a the original Fender Stratocaster print that I've been wanting to convert. I'm new to SW, but I'm learning as fast as I have time for.

-Jbot
 
solidworks scan drawing to model

solidworks i use a scanned drawing or even a pdf file and use print screen to copy image to clipboard and paste into Paint to create a jpg or bmp

i create a new sketch with a red line of known dimensioned length. then scale sketch picture so scale in scanned drawing matches new sketch line. you want an inch on scanned drawing to match an inch on any new sketch. also rotate scanned drawing as needed. normal to need a degree or 2 of rotation.

within reason you can use the 2D drawing and create 3D parts. accuracy is not always the best as scanned drawing might not be of high enough quality.

some bitmap to vector conversion programs may create thousands of short line when there is only 1 long line especially if scanned drawing is of poor quality. Automatic conversion sometimes requires a lot of time manually fixing errors.

Drawing red lines on another layer, on top of a black and white scanned drawing is a very old Autocad trick and can be done with most other CAD programs..
 
solidworks i use a scanned drawing or even a pdf file and use print screen to copy image to clipboard and paste into Paint to create a jpg or bmp

i create a new sketch with a red line of known dimensioned length. then scale sketch picture so scale in scanned drawing matches new sketch line. you want an inch on scanned drawing to match an inch on any new sketch. also rotate scanned drawing as needed. normal to need a degree or 2 of rotation.

within reason you can use the 2D drawing and create 3D parts. accuracy is not always the best as scanned drawing might not be of high enough quality.

some bitmap to vector conversion programs may create thousands of short line when there is only 1 long line especially if scanned drawing is of poor quality. Automatic conversion sometimes requires a lot of time manually fixing errors.

Drawing red lines on another layer, on top of a black and white scanned drawing is a very old Autocad trick and can be done with most other CAD programs..

The problem I have with doing that is, neither of my plotters will plot the entire thing. The old HP Designjet 500 will plot the background but runs out of memory and won't plot the red lines and the new Ricoh MP2400 laser plotter won't plot the background but will plot the redlines (in black only).

So if anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears! I am using AutoCAD 2010 for this and don't remember having this trouble in earlier versions, but I don't do this that often.
 
my first machining job was working for a sheet metal artist who would get parts cut on a water jet. We are talking fanciful designs maybe 300-2000 curved surfaces nothing was straight.

We tried using raster to vector programs, but the result was not accurate enough.

we ended up just using CAm software that let us underlay a 2d image, then I trace the water jet tool path on it. Took a good 3-9 hours per piece.

perhaps if the source was a very sharp, super high contrast image to start with. but for most things it will require a gross amount of rework.
 
my first machining job was working for a sheet metal artist who would get parts cut on a water jet. We are talking fanciful designs maybe 300-2000 curved surfaces nothing was straight.

We tried using raster to vector programs, but the result was not accurate enough.

we ended up just using CAm software that let us underlay a 2d image, then I trace the water jet tool path on it. Took a good 3-9 hours per piece.

perhaps if the source was a very sharp, super high contrast image to start with. but for most things it will require a gross amount of rework.

you are correct a clean black and white image is best, but there will always be tweeking because of the pixels in the jpg.

i do a lot of logos for some of the custom bike builders here in phoenix, put them in belt drive covers, derby covers, point covers, air cleaner covers and on the spoke of custom rims. sometimes i get 90% and other times 10% of what looks good and then have to sketch the rest. i use correl and SolidWorks to get this done. correl gets me the best 2d and SW allows me to import the pic in a sketch then i bring in the dwg from correl and build the parts with the logos in them.
 
you are correct a clean black and white image is best, but there will always be tweeking because of the pixels in the jpg.

i do a lot of logos for some of the custom bike builders here in phoenix, put them in belt drive covers, derby covers, point covers, air cleaner covers and on the spoke of custom rims. sometimes i get 90% and other times 10% of what looks good and then have to sketch the rest. i use correl and SolidWorks to get this done. correl gets me the best 2d and SW allows me to import the pic in a sketch then i bring in the dwg from correl and build the parts with the logos in them.

We used an Adobe product for the raster to vector, then exported as a DWG into auto cad, or some proprietary CAM software that was for the waterjet, and had some of the absolute best 2D layout tools. The software was for an OMAX waterjet and to this day I'm still trying to get a copy of that software for 2d layout.
 
i Use vectric v-carve.

it has decent capabilty to convert and clean artwork or pictures into vectors. then it routes them with v shaped bits to various depth for different line width. pretty slick. pretty cheap.
 
For a great program look at www.arborimage.com
It is a raster to vector program. It is great. Version 2 was only 300 dollars. But I beleive version 3 is the only one they are selling and the price is around 1,300 dollars. Let us know if they will sell you the version 2. There is a tutorial and the man there will even do a go to meeting demo on your computer. This is a great , easy to use program.

Check them out and let me know what you think.

Bob
 
For a great program look at www.arborimage.com
It is a raster to vector program. It is great. Version 2 was only 300 dollars. But I beleive version 3 is the only one they are selling and the price is around 1,300 dollars. Let us know if they will sell you the version 2. There is a tutorial and the man there will even do a go to meeting demo on your computer. This is a great , easy to use program.

Check them out and let me know what you think.

Bob

How well does it take logos and pictures and turn them into Vector images? So far all of the free software I've tried to use only captures about 20% of the images.
 
Vectorworks does it very well.

I've messed around with a lot of blueprints. It's not perfect, but waaaaaaaaay easier than starting from scratch.

Jimno
 








 
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