Product category:
CAD draughting software
News Release from: Softcover International | Subject: Scan2CAD raster to vector converter
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial
Team on 20 October 2004
Clean up dirty scanned drawings for free
Publisher of a low cost professional raster to vector converter, is offering raster editing and drawing tools free of charge to any PC CAD user who needs to clean up scanned drawings.
Softcover International, the publisher of Scan2CAD, a low cost professional raster to vector converter, is offering Scan2CAD's raster editing and drawing tools free of charge to any PC CAD user who needs to clean up dirty scanned drawings The free Scan2CAD raster editor can be obtained by downloading a working evaluation copy of Scan2CAD v7 from Softcover International's website
This article was originally published on Manufacturingtalk on 25 May 2006 at 8.00am (UK)
Related stories
"Animals Always" sculpture facilitated by Scan2CAD
This Thursday sees the unveiling of celebrated American metal sculptor Albert Paley's "Animals Always" sculpture at the St Louis Zoo, MO facilitated by a combination of Scan2CAD and AutoCAD
Scan2CAD aids in new St Louis Zoo metal sculpture
Paley Studios have used Scan2CAD raster to vector conversion software to turn hundreds of scanned paper profiles of animals and plants into AutCAD files for a giant new steel sculpture
Scan2CAD v7 automatically converts scanned paper drawings (rasters) into editable DXF (vector) files for editing in any PC CAD program.
Tidying up a dirty scan is an essential part of this raster to vector conversion process.
The Scan2CAD evaluation program is a fully working raster editor with no restrictions on loading, editing or saving cleaned raster files.
Further reading
Wide format scanner supported by Scan2CAD
Colortrac SmartLF wide format scanner supported by Scan2CAD
New Scan2CAD v7.3 adds thresholding technology
Softcover have added thresholding technology to Scan2CAD v7.3, the latest release of their low cost raster to vector converter.
A0 colour scanner now includes Scan2CAD
The Colortrac SmartLF is supplied with Scan2CAD from Softcover
The Scan2CAD v7 evaluation program will open any size of scanned paper drawing saved in a variety of popular raster file formats, like BMP (bitmap), TIFF, CAL, PNG, JPG or GIF.
The imported raster file can be color, gray scale or monochrome (black and white).
The free Scan2CAD raster editing tools will work with color or monochrome images.
Its automatic or manual color reduction tools will reduce color scans from 16.7m colors to a more CAD-practical 256 colors (the AutoCAD maximum) or less, typically eight or 16 colors.
Among the supplied raster editing tools are: * Rotate by Degrees - rotate or deskew a raster image by a user-defined number of degrees.
* Rotate by Line - automatically deskew a raster image using a 0/180 degree reference line.
* Remove Speckles - clean up the raster image by setting a user-defined pixel value.
* Remove Holes - clean up raster image by removing white holes from it.
* Thin/Thicken lines - make thick raster lines thinner and faint lines thicker.
* Thicken Pixels - make dithered (extremely weak and broken) images more solid.
* Outline - delete pixels from solid areas of a raster image to leave the raster outline.
* Warp - deform a raster image by moving specified points with the image attached.
The raster editing tools allow the user to cut, copy, move and paste parts of the drawing, as well as to crop and mirror the raster image.
A range of raster drawing tools allow the PC CAD user to draw and edit raster lines, rectangles, circles, arcs, points, Bezier curves and solid filled areas.
Selected parts of the raster image can be erased individually or with a block rub-out.
Raster text can be entered using any installed Windows TrueType fonts.
Raster drawings which have been tidied-up in Scan2CAD can be saved and printed or plotted.
Steve Hannath, Softcover's marketing director, said: "Most scanned drawings need to be cleaned up.
The Scan2CAD evaluation program is a free raster editor that makes it easy for PC CAD users to tidy up scanned drawings and to make drafting changes to them.
It will help to maintain raster legacy data in tip-top condition.
And, if ever there's a need to convert these raster images into vectors for editing in CAD, the Scan2CAD evaluation can be made into a full working raster to vector converter of unrivalled quality pretty much immediately".
Comprehensive information on raster to vector conversion in general and Scan2CAD in particular can be found on Softcover's website where CAD users can also sign up to receive Softcover's free raster to vector conversion newsletter.
• Softcover International: contact details and other news
• Email this article to a colleague
• Register for the free Manufacturingtalk email newsletter
• Manufacturingtalk Home Page
Search the Pro-Talk network of sites
