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Need software solution to turn photographs of 2D shapes into .dxf/.dwg.

Question Boy

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May 11, 2005
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Napa, California
I'm using Solidworks at work to make 3D models/drawings for typical machine shop use, but they're asking me to do something new: I need to take physical 2D patterns and create Solidworks drawings for them, they're like sewing patterns, so doesn't require close tolerance. But, there are a lot of them, so I need to be more efficient than I can be by measuring out each one with a ruler. I started to googling for software that can import a picture and kick out a .dxf, and I'm getting lost in the options.

Anyone already gone through something similar? It's a big enough job to justify buying software as long as it's not crazy expensive.

QB
 
My buddy does it for me using Adobe illustrator some how. I have the program too, but have never had the time to learn it.

I usually have some clean up to do once I pull it into Solidworks. Another option I have done as well, is if you have Adobe Illustrator, and also Solidworks, you can open .ai files in Solidworks, and use it for tracing things.
 
I used to just take a photograph of them with a scaled ruler then trace the lines in autocad. I never found that the convert to dxf programs available did it in such a way that they made closed lines that the laser or plasma understood. It was faster to just trace.

Expect some parallax distortion. It doesn't work for amazing precision. I'd usually use a combiation of it, and hand measuring.
 
I need to take physical 2D patterns and create Solidworks drawings for them,

Anyone already gone through something similar? It's a big enough job to justify buying software as long as it's not crazy expensive.

Almost any graphics program can do this, I think even Mastercam and definitely Illustrator, CorelDraw, and even Inkscape (if you can keep it from crashing). But it sounds like your problem is, you need to do a lot of them and would rather not have to do each on by hand?

Got a good computer guy handy ? Ras2vec will convert from bitmaps to something you can deal with, I'm thinking GraphicsMagic will allow you to automate batch processing of a bunch of photos, and the guy who maintains it is super helpful. More upfront trouble but setting up to do automatically might be worth the hassle ?

And as snowman says, you're probably going to have to run the dxf's through a repair program at the end, too. Or do it by hand :)
 
illustrator. It has a technical drawing trace setting that works well.
bad is adobe is subscription only for illustrator now. If you can find an old copy hold it dear.
 
I don't have a recommendation better than what's been posted but wanted to point out that getting a program like Gimp (free) or photoshop and learning to sharpen or soften the image as needed will be a big help. It will help get rid of extraneous stuff when you import it.

Haven't read the whole thing but this looks like a good tutorial:
 
I do it in Adobe Illustrator, I can take any image, create outlines and export as a DXF, and am able to open in SolidWorks.
 
I use Cutting Shop from Arbor Image. Used to be around $300+. Produces nice dxf's with arcs, lines. It's the best I could find in raster to vector software. It doesn't output dxf's with billions of short line segments like graphic software typically does. In graphics where objects are printed it doesn't really matter if a circle is represented by a thousand short line segments.

I started using it way back in the day when my machines had very little memory.

No matter what raster to vector software you use it'll need some cleanup, editing. Line crossings seem to be the main cleanup needed.
 
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I've done some of these. I've never had great luck with the automated raster to vector tools. I just import them into SW as a sketch picture and trace things with splines. You can also tweak the outline to match measured dimensions.

If the pattern is small enough, a flatbed scanner is going to give you a less distorted image than a photo.
 
Came across another one, never used it but Turbocad is an established company, almost all scanners nowadays will scan to pdf, this is $200

 








 
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