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Scan to CAD

Professional Outsourced Scan to CAD Services

The best way to preserve old drawings is to scan them into CAD files. At CAD/CAM Services, we’ve been offering our scan to CAD services for decades, and we’ve scanned millions of drawings for companies just like yours. 

Over the years, we’ve experienced a lot of backrooms filled with rolled-up drawings stacked on top of each other. Though this might be a great way to store old drawings, it’s a really inefficient way to store anything that you might use again. Think about how much time you’re wasting leafing through stacks of drawings, trying to find the right one.

What if someone from sales has the drawing you’re looking for? You can easily waste hours looking in your drawing room before realizing that someone has the drawing on their desk. Alternatively, you can choose our scan to CAD services and everyone can use the same drawing at the same time.

Our scan to CAD services are here to save you time and money every time you need to pull up a drawing. Instead of spending minutes or hours looking for the drawing, you can have it pulled up in seconds.

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Professional Outsourced Scan to CAD Services
What Are Scan to CAD Services? 

What Are Scan to CAD Services? 

Our scan to CAD services involve taking your legacy engineering drawings, blueprints, or layouts and putting them through gentle 2D scanners. These 2D scanners are specifically designed to offer incredibly high resolution, high throughput, and gentle-feed settings that prevent damage to your drawings. 

These services will work whether you have one drawing or one thousand drawings that need to be fully digitized.

Once the drawings are scanned in 2D, then our engineers will get to work. We’ll pull the scanned image up, and open your CAD program of choice on our computers. Our engineers will open a brand-new CAD file, and start a drawing from scratch. We’ll use your scanned image as a reference to ensure every line is perfect on the new CAD file.

This is the best way to convert a Mylar drawing to a CAD file, and it’s been our go-to method for decades. By doing this process the right way, we can ensure CAD Perfect® drawings, and make sure every scan to CAD file is a CAD Perfect CAD Conversion®. 

Why Scan to CAD Services Matters

The company you choose for your scan to CAD services is really important. A lot of other companies will cut corners and try to use automatic software that isn’t safe, isn’t reliable, and isn’t worth your time or money — anyone can try to use automatic software, but it almost never works.

With our engineers and drafters, we do the process manually from scratch. This is the only way to guarantee precision, accuracy, and functionality of your final CAD files. Plus, it allows us to turn your old engineering drawings into 3D CAD models if you’d like.

With our help, you’ll get better results with faster turnarounds. The best part? You never have to overpay for our services. We typically use an hourly or per-drawing price that ensures you save money without sacrificing any quality.

Picking the wrong scan to CAD outsourced engineering company is a quick way to lose money, put your intellectual property at risk, and waste your time. Avoid all of those headaches when you choose CAD/CAM Services. 

Why Scan to CAD Services Matters

So many people choose CAD/CAM Services, and a lot of our customers are repeat customers. When you work with us, you’ll notice a lot of benefits in every scan to CAD project we handle:

Faster conversions.

We have over 100 engineers and drafters working around the clock to provide 24/7 engineering progress. This means faster project completion for every scan to CAD conversion. 

The best way to preserve your old drawings.

Creating CAD files for your old drawings is simply the best way to preserve your old drawings.

Save money on manufacturing.

While we convert each design, we can make changes that adhere to modern best practices for design for manufacturing (DFM), saving you money in the machine shop. 

Professionalism and honesty, every step of the way.

We are a trusted outsourced engineering company that is here to save you money, and we’ll never waste your time. You’ll immediately spot our professionalism and honesty, and it’s why so many people choose CAD/CAM Services.

Dozens of other services to bundle together.

We do more in-house, so you can save even more money. Allow our engineers to tackle your biggest projects.

Quality you can’t find elsewhere.

We have positioned ourselves as one of the biggest and most trusted outsourced companies in America. We offer quality that you simply can’t find elsewhere, and we’re the only team that can offer CAD Perfect® results. 

What Goes into Scan to CAD Services from CAD/CAM Services?

What Goes into Scan to CAD Services from CAD/CAM Services?

Our scan to CAD services are custom-made for each of our clients. It starts with a free consultation, where you’ll explain how many drawings you have and what type of CAD programs you’re using. From there, our team will start 2D scanning all of your documents and digitizing them.

Once the digitization is done, our engineers and drafters can start converting every drawing into a brand-new CAD drawing in your preferred program. We offer 2D and 3D CAD work, so it’s your choice.

Every CAD drawing will go through a round of quality checks and peer reviews to ensure they’re perfect. That’s part of how we can offer CAD Perfect CAD Conversions® at CAD/CAM Services.

All of our CAD files will be sent to you digitally through an encrypted platform that the DoD uses. If you want any changes or corrections, let us know and we’ll send back the corrected files within 48 hours.

Our Scan to CAD Services Include: 

  • 2D CAD Conversion
  • 3D CAD Translation
  • Mylar to CAD
  • 3D Modeling Services
  • Engineering Simulations like FEA, as Needed 
  • And Much More (Including Custom Services)
Our Scan to CAD Services Include: 
More About Scan to CAD Services

More About Scan to CAD Services

Keeping old drawings in a backroom is really dangerous. It’s easy for a thief to steal a drawing, a fire or water damage can wipe out your drawings, and they’re so hard to track. This is why so many people choose to digitize their old drawings or convert them to usable CAD files.

With a CAD conversion, you can get quicker quotes from machine shops across the country. Plus, the drawings are significantly easier to find, share, and collaborate on.

A lot of companies will translate their Mylar drawings to CAD so they can start updating legacy drawings without the headaches of drawing on Mylar sheets. Whatever your reason for a scan to CAD conversion, you can trust CAD/CAM Services.

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We have been successfully performing scan to CAD projects for decades. With millions of conversions under our belts, we know that we can help with your project. No matter how large or complicated your project is – you should consider our services. Our outsourced scan to CAD services can save you time and money, while avoiding countless headaches.

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FAQ's

CAD Conversion FAQs
What do you need to provide me with an accurate quote?

We need to know source CAD and target CAD software. Since large quantity orders can be discounted by us you can provide us with the number of parts you need to be converted.

If you tell us the desired purpose of the conversion we can offer you some conversion options. We can also convert your files into vendor-neutral file types (.STEP, .STL, etc,).

Please email us even cell phone photos, and the rough size of what you wish scanned and converted [email protected].

What do I get?

You get native Cad Perfect™ files with the full-featured model tree (where applicable, since some file types have no trees), and features can be fully parametric. It all depends on your goals.  We prefer to not translate any files. Our goal is to deliver to you a file that you do not have to touch. Our work is exactly as if you had reproduced that work in-house.

Which CAD file formats do you work with?

All the CAD file formats are listed on this page but bear in mind that we also work with exotic and legacy CAD systems.  After 31 years of providing CAD Services, we have run into almost any CAD file format.


Which CAD systems do you work with?

We support all the modern CAD systems including SolidWorks, Catia, Siemens NX, PTC Creo, Inventor, Revit, AutoCAD, and many others.

I have some weird CAD files from the previous century, can you help me?

Yes, absolutely. We can perform legacy CAD conversions.  Just send us some example files, and what CAD system we need to wind up in, and let us design the best solution for you.We have worked with old Computer Vision tapes, Anvil, and many other 1980’s systems.

Digitizing FAQs
What is the average raster to vector (R2V) 2-D conversion price?

The typical AEC D & E size sheet is $135. There are possible discounts depending on the job size. The more you convert the less you pay.  The bulk of the files we produce are for AutoCAD.

Creating models and drawings over scanned analog documents seem so easy – why such a low price?

In order to make an accurate representation, you have to calibrate the original drawing, which may have deformed during its storage period. Non-dimensioned mediums need to be thoroughly calibrated before digitizing.

Parts of scanned data may be lost due to time and other factors. Because it is important to recreate the design intent,  we need to recreate lost data.

You ONLY receive  Cad Perfect™ files – as if you had drawn these by hand.

Do you support BIM modeling?

Using Revit, yes we do.  Think of BIM as an intelligent 3D model of your building.  We know exactly where all of the HVAC is, IT cabling, electrical, the cost of doors and windows, when mechanical systems need to be serviced, all the way to a room number with a phone number and IP in that room. In addition to our Ray Tracing technology to support some very life-like photo renderings.


What is DHS – Critical Infrastructure Products

The Department of Homeland Security protocol  PPD-21 requirement has deemed that sixteen (16) industries and services are critical to our US Nations security.

These industries  require additional security protocols when creating CAD files. CAD / CAM Services follows all of these requirements. Think of industries and info structures such as power, water, along with fourteen (14) other industries.  For a full list please see Critical Infrastructure Products.

What is a “Calibrated” Mylar image?

Mylar films can be stored in climate-controlled facilities. However, films get skewed and change sizes over time – ironically not linear. So what changes on one end, does not apply to what is in the middle, or the other end.  We have seen ‘J’ size Aerospace Mylars (about 48×180”), vary by a full inch.

CAD/CAM Services utilizes a proprietary process to make Mylar raster images dead on a 5” or 10” grid. Our process was developed in conjunction with, and approved by Boeing engineers.

General CAD Questions
How do I send a sample, in order to get a quote?

Fill out our quote form, attach your files, or simply send us an email. Tell everything about your project, like the model purpose.

For smaller files < 15 MB you can simply email them to us.  For something larger, just drop them in any number of drop boxes like Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive and others.  Or if you would like, just contact us for a private, hardened link.

It is fine to use most any time of compression such as  *.zip, *.rar, *.tar, *.7z, *.arc, *.LBR, and even *.iso images.

A direct email is [email protected]

We also use a hardened OwnCloud web file sharing platform for unlimited file transfers. We provide unique and very private Web Storage Portals, this also supports file syncing for extreme convenience for you. Because so much of our work is DOD or weapons design work, Security – and confidentiality is very important to us.

Will CAD / CAM Services Sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA)?

Yes. NDAs are a common part of our business. All data is yours – not ours, and treated as proprietary data and not for public consumption or use. Probably 70% of our work is under NDA agreements. We can generally get these signed within the day.

What is the estimated delivery time?

It depends on the scope of work:

  • 2D drawings – small quantity, normally 48 hours.  We have several customers where they contract to us, keeping 4-8 drafters busy full time.
  • 3D models – complexity dependent, but smaller jobs in 2-3 days. Some models we have spent months on.  Again, we have several customers where they contract to us, keeping 6-10 3D CAD designers busy full time.

Simple jobs have a lead time of 48 hours. Larger projects are delivered and invoiced weekly.

Did you really own the trademark Cad Perfect™, Cad Perfect CAD Conversions™ and Cad / Cam Services™?

Yes, we did back in 2008. We started using Cad Perfect™ back in the early 1990s because all of our customers wanted only real Cad Perfect™ work. Back then the buzz words were terms like machine ready, or DXF Traceover and others.

The problem is, nobody wanted that. They all wanted drawings and models that they did not have to touch. Everybody wanted drawings just as if they hand redrew the work themselves.

Thus, Cad / Cam Services™ was the first company to start offering ONLY Cad Perfect™ work.

Do you support the PPD-21 Directive?

Yes we do, and have now for several years. In addition, we also support the industry specific plans as well.