App to scan dwg files for specific geometry presence

[BOPdesigner]

Does anybody know of an application that can scan dwg files for the presence of a particular shape? Like what OCR does for text but in this case it is lines and curves that form a particular shape or symbol.

 

[CarlB]

No,and it sounds like a difficult nut to crack to write a program for. It sounds like shape could be made up of any combination of lines, polylines, arcs etc.
How would user provide shape paramaters to search for, by selecting them on the screen, then the program would look for similar geometry?

 

[DRWeig]

One company I worked for had an application that counted symbols like light switches, receptacles, light fixtures, fire alarm stuff, and even arcs with the arc lengths. It did an automated takeoff of electrical building plans for an electrical contractor.

I know we had to make our legend "just so" to allow the program to grab the symbols and go through the drawings picking the right stuff.

That was 10 years ago. There seem to be a lot of choices now.

Here are two examples:

http://www.accubid.com/products/cadtakeoff_elec.htm

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?id=10354648&siteID=123112

If you put the following phrase in Google, you'll find lots more.

autocad takeoff software

Best to you,

Goober Dave

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