PDF to CAD converter

Voicy

Voicy

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Hey guys

We're scanning in a forest of old hand-drawn A0 design drawings of different facilities and services. Currently we're referencing the PDF scans in on CAD and then tracing it line for line. This seems extremely tedious.

I'm not having a terribly handy time with Google on the topic and was wondering...Does anyone know of any free-to-use/demo software that can somehow convert single layer PDF's to line drawings in any kind of CAD format?

Even if it comes out sketchy, we can realign different areas, but redrawing mundane lines seems a bit old-tech.
 
Not happening imo. CAD -> PDF is easy, the other is not. Your losing too much info that the conversion prog would have to guess even on single layer. e.g. are those 4 lines arranged as a rectangle or is that a rectangle object?

If you do find something though I'd be interested too.
 
2D traced lines is more than enough - similar to how word recognition works.

This is purely to get legacy drawings in a workable electronic form. None of it needs to be 3D oriented.
 
czc said:
Try this. http://anydwg.com/pdf-to-dxf.html

Didn't work for us though.
Click to expand...

Thanks, will try is ... so far Aide™ tries to convert it to a BMP and then tries to extract lines out of it but due to the age of the paper etc. I'm getting a ton of jargon and it recognizes folds in the drawings more so than actual construction lines.

EDIT: Oh right, I see it's also referring to Aide. :(
 
Maybe try to clean it up first in photoshop to take some of the noise out.
 
The best for PDF to Word are Nitro PDF proffesional 6.2.......
Nuance Proffesional 6
Maybe they can doe to CAD aswell.
I am looking to buy either but helish expensive for what I would need them for...
 
Best yet. Get one of those fancy 3d scanners and go to site and get everything in 3d. Accuracy 0.1mm.

Like I once read. PDF to DWG would be the holy grail of CAD.

You could maybe have a search on this forum, haven't been there in ages. http://www.cadtutor.net/forum/
 
na i dont think that is possible, no matter how much i want it to be so! lol
 
I've just bought "PdfGrabber 6.0 Home" and saw the proffesional version had CAD and others on it?
Try that out.
 
I had reasonable sucess with small logos and such some time ago. Used a trace application in Coreldraw called CorelTrace. Dont know about A0 dwgs though.
It traces the scan, then converts the trace to CDR format. Then u can export the CDR file to .....DWG?
 
Last edited:
Rands said:
I had reasonable sucess with small logos and such some time ago. Used a trace application in Coreldraw called CorelTrace. Dont know about A0 dwgs though.
It traces the scan, then converts the trace to CDR format. Then u can export the CDR file to .....DWG?
Click to expand...

Nopes. I know CorelDraw like the back of my hand. It won't do the job. Just like the other packages it will pick up the fold lines and the noise no matter how much you try and tune it.

It all comes down to the quality of the scan imo, and these systems that convert paper to pdf (actually just a bitmap in a pdf container) are more size orientated than quality.
If the lines where in a different colour, you could filter the results better. If you had a decent scanner and the time, you could tune the scan rather than the trace and probably get reasonable results, but that would probably take as much time as tracing them.
 
Yeah converting raster to vector for logos etc is fine, architectural drawings on the other hand...

What are you using the drawings for?
 
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