Scanning Drawings

[Kaaleen]

Currently I am a work at home mom. I draw Civil/Survey maps for Civil Engineers and Surveyors. At this time I am currently using AutoCAD2000 and BHS... I have been using AutoCAD since 1992.

Here is a little background before I get to my question...

My husband works in Cable TV . He is what they call a sweep tech.. He sweeps cable TV systems once the cable has been strung and spliced. The he sweeps and chases noise through out the system. Once that is done he does what they call Node Certification. This happens at the end of the project.. Once the catv has been Certified they can turn the system on.
Now... as they go along they need to create 17X11 as-build drawings. At this time a secretary with no drawing experience is doing this. (I wonder what they look like ) They do this all by hand. Very time consuming and tedious. I was thinking why not take a clean print (minus all everything that has been changed) and scan it into AutoCAD.. then draw in what is new. This way they will have professional looking prints to turn into the Head office and the CATV System.

Now that the back ground is covered...

I have experience with AutoCAD... But I do not have experience in scanning drawings and importing them into AutoCAD. Do you have any experience in this area? What exactly would it entail? What kind of scanner works best? Prices? So on and so forth....

 

[dik]

There is a reply to this message under the thread "Dimension Input", where I first encountered the querie.

 

[Qshake]

Isn't this what we used to use digitizers for?!

 

[Kaaleen]

Qshake... Digitizers are useful for some projects. Scanning the drawing ( I would think - do not know as of yet)and importing it into AutoCAD would be faster.
Look at it this way: A set of structural drawing consist of 4, 8, 12 sheets when completed?
Would it be faster to digitize the plans, then turn around and have to add all the necessary information, such as: text, dimensions, trees, lights, section symbols, door and window scheduals, hatching, detail drawings?
OR scan everything in all at once, and then all you have to do is make sure all of the informaion is placed onto the correct layers?
I'm not sure if it can be done this easily. But, if it can just think of how many drafting hours would one save. Digitizing is time consuming.

 

[dik]

Raster to Vector conversions don't do text well. If you can get the GIS info for the area, a digitizer can be used for supplementing the data by drawing the CATV stuff...

 

[Qshake]

Kaleen, that was a question not a comment. Our civil group used to do lots of digitizing and, of course, it was time consuming. On the other hand it was the only viable option at the time. I'm sure that while it is old technology it is still probably very useful in some situations.

12 structural drawings, no, I'm sorry (well, not really) to say I've never worked on a job that small! But I did start working when inking drawings was still the norm and Leroy was a something and not just a someone...

 

[Kaaleen]

Qshake...
lol... I wasn't sure if it was a question or a comment. My thoughts were that "Hopefully it would be easier and less time consuming" The jury is still out. Time will tell, as I said I'm still in the research faze yet.

 

[shadow]

well Kaaleen
you have by now recieved my email if you would please post it here in the forum so that other can see

and for all who read this
scanning and digitazation with a digitizer is handy to have both ways sometimes its better to have the digitizer than the scanner and others its the oposite
but all in all the easyest for me was the scanner but having a small digitizer makes it all go faster just because you can customize a 16 button puck so that your going less to the keyboard and icon buttons and just to let
DIK know that raster to vector is as good as you make it im sure everyone knows all the companies that claim that they have automatic R2V but to tell the truth the closest thing i have seen yet do that was corel draw 8s OCRTrace program then after that you save to a dxf and open in autocad map and run the drawing clean up utility and convert and join poly lines
beleive me i know i have done masive jobs (couple hundred 24"X36" sheets at a time) its not fun work for a lot of people just because it very time consuming thats why if you look online for some one to do this kind of work they charge $200 to $300 an hour so semi automatic is still beter than nothing

 

[dik]

Shadow:
Good hardware and software automates a lot of the 'good as you make it'.

I've been involved with many projects using rastor to vector conversions and if the original drawings are pristine, the results can be excellent. Basically used them for hospital floor plans and a couple of airport floor plans. The detail contained on the former drawings is extreme and the results have been very good.

The hardware is top of the line and the cost for the software packages far exceed what I can afford...

As the quality of drawings diminishes... so do the results... The service bureau I've used only charges a few hundred dollars a drawing and the proceedure is nearly automatic with the exception of squaring the drawing up in the first place and changing line weights. They may have to 'tinker' with the output... but not an awful lot. They do have to 'tune' the software for the input. Even contours end up as splined polylines and not by 'joining the dots'.