Optimize Your Paper to CAD Strategy
Does your company have outdated paper-based mechanical or engineering drawings taking up storage space in flat files or rolled up on shelves in the basement? You don’t throw them out because the designs need to be retained for future work or updates. And, you don’t convert them to your CAD system because it’s just too time-consuming and not cost-effective to have your design engineers working on old drawings. So, you wait until you need to update one, and then someone spends hours down in the basement looking for the right drawing; then your design engineer takes the time to redraw it in your CAD system and update it. How many man hours did it take to find an update that one drawing? What was the cost of those man-hours? Was new design work put on hold in order to take care of this one update; how many lost dollars did that cost you?
There is a Better Way!
By hiring a CAD conversion company to convert all of your old design drawings into CAD, you never have to go through this costly, time-consuming one-at-a-time update process again. You can take advantage of the newest technologies and best CAD practices, at far less cost per drawing, by using a qualified CAD conversion company. By outsourcing and converting all of your paper drawings at one time, you will bring new efficiencies and better CAD management techniques into your company: you’ll save money; you’ll save time.
It’s not nearly as time-consuming when all or your paper drawings are converted at once. Rather than redrawing each one, a CAD conversion company will use fast, high accuracy large format scanners to quickly scan and save the digital files. Because they have the right scanning equipment for the job, along with experienced scanning technicians, the right CAD conversion company can convert many drawings to digital fairly quickly. That’s one of the reasons why outsourcing your paper to CAD conversion project makes sense. Of course, not all outsource CAD conversion companies are equal. It’s always best to do a little homework and get competitive bids from at least 3 companies.
Speed and Quality
Fast scanning is not the only consideration. Because the scanned file will need further conversion before it can be used by your CAD system, the scanning process must produce the high-quality scan. So, find out what kind of scanners the outsource company uses, how many they have and what qualifications their technical scanning personnel possesses. Remember, image quality is everything. The old adage of garbage in, garbage out holds true when you’re converting engineering drawings to your CAD system. If two lines are muddied up and appear as a single line in a scan, that’ll give you an inaccurate CAD file. The scanners should be able to provide the best-scanned raster image possible, and then that image should be rectified to make sure it is aligned properly, scaled correctly, and that it measures correctly on all axes points.
Raster to Vector Conversion
Now that you’ve ensured that the CAD conversion company can provide accurate, as well as fast, scans, let’s look into their raster to vector conversion processes, because each of your scanned raster images needs to be converted into your CAD vector format. This is a vitally important step that requires skill and know-how.
There are several different methods for converting drawings into CAD — heads-up digitizing, commercial R to V software, custom wrote CAD conversion scripts and software, or some combination of all three. An experienced CAD conversion outsources company will be able to determine the method (or combination of methods) that provides the best end result CAD conversion for your type of drawings. This is one place where a professional raster to vector conversion service has the benefit of experience to determine the best raster to vector conversion process for any particular drawing or set of drawings.
What About the Cost?
Often organizations are concerned about the cost associated with paper to CAD conversion and worry that they will need to outsource their work to India or some other off-shore location in order to be able to afford the scanning and conversion service. This is far from true! Companies such as CAD / CAM Services, Inc., located in Celina, Texas, U.S.A., has not only perfected the paper to CAD conversion process but has introduced efficiencies that enable them to provide this service at prices that rival the companies located in India!
Learn three strategies for optimizing your paper to cad conversion by downloading our white paper today!
White paper: 3 Strategies for optimizing your paper to CAD Conversion
