| FAQ - Frequently Asked
Questions |
 |
|
| |
| What
are the benefits of converting legacy drawings? |
| |
| What
is manual redraw? |
| |
| What
is heads-down digitizing? |
| |
| What
is heads-up digitizing? |
| |
| What
is a Scanned Raster Image Drawing? |
| |
| What
is a Vectorized CAD drawing? |
| |
| What
is auto-vectorization? |
| |
| What are the benefits of converting
legacy drawings? |
Drawings which are redrawn into
vector formats, producing intelligent objects
and complying with your company's current CAD
standards, can streamline the drawing change
process that enables critical resources to
perform more value-added work. Many companies
have found that their legacy drawings contain
critical resource information which cannot be
efficiently retrieved from drawings that consist
of paper or even raster images. Our Redraw
provides you with the ability to data-mine your
drawings for information using text search
engines, browsers and various other tools that
link drawing data to relational databases, thus
improving the efficiency of your operations by
20-30%. Some of our clients maximize their
return by having us redraw only those legacy
drawings that are candidates for engineering
changes or reviews due to projects and work
orders that are scheduled to be released during
the upcoming year; others have us redraw
selected legacy drawing simply in order to
obtain the benefits of efficient information
retrieval. |
| |
|
|
| |
| |
| What is manual redraw? |
Manual redraw uses the
cognitive skills of a human operator to
recognize and control the construction of each
object within a drawing. The simplest (and most
common) way to perform manual redraw on a paper
drawing is by visual take-off from the paper
drawing into the computer using CAD software and
operator initiated commands and placement. All
manual redraw techniques rely heavily on the
human operator to control the redrawing process
and this results in highly accurate drawings
which are required for further processing like
transferring of data to CNC for machining. |
| |
|
|
| |
| |
What is
heads-down digitizing? |
| Heads-down digitizing is a labor intensive
manual redraw process where an operator
hand-digitizes vertices (i.e. points) from a
paper drawing taped to a digitizing board and
then executes CAD commands to redraw the lines
and arcs and retype the text. |
| |
|
|
| |
| |
What is
heads-up digitizing? |
Heads-up digitizing is a third
form of the manual redraw process where the
paper drawing is first scanned into a raster
image and then displayed on a computer screen.
The drawing is redrawn into vector format using
software that traces vector lines and arcs on
top of the raster image background. The software
normally pauses at intersecting lines and waits
for the human operator to initiate a command
based on the operator's cognitive decision. This
method is called heads-up digitizing, tracing or
overlaying. With a trained operator it can be
faster than other manual redraw
methods. |
| |
|
|
| |
| |
What is a
Scanned Raster Image Drawing? |
A scanned raster image is a
digitized image of a drawing taken either from a
paper copy or microfilm copy of the drawing. A
scanned raster image places small black dots,
called pixels, where it recognizes a contrast
between the normally white paper background and
the pencil or ink markings. A typical drawing
can have millions of small black dots, or
pixels, representing these markings. This
technology is similar to making a Xerox
photocopy on paper using an office copy machine,
a process that most of us are familiar with. The
main differences are that drawings can be much
larger than the 8-1/2"x11" paper and instead of
placing the image immediately on a blank piece
of paper, a digitized image is placed in a
computer file that can later be viewed, edited
and printed by a computer program. Normally each
of these dots is one color (black) and raster
files can get very large if uncompressed. If
color is added to each dot, these raster files
can become exceedingly large even when
compressed. |
| |
|
|
| |
| |
What is a
Vectorized CAD drawing? |
A vectorized CAD drawing is a
computer file that represents a drawing using
more intelligent data than dots or pixels. This
data can be used to distinguish between line
segments, arcs, points, circles, text and color.
Vectorized drawings can also define even more
intelligent objects by defining collections of
lines, arcs, circles and text as objects called
symbols or blocks. The real power of CAD is
derived from its ability to define and
manipulate large numbers of scalable, reusable
objects and most CAD drawings require more than
simply pixels, lines and arcs. Virtually all CAD
and graphic illustration software defines image
data as vectors because of the associated
precision, the capability of rapid processing of
vector objects, and operator ease with regard to
modifying these images. |
| |
|
|
| |
| |
| What is auto-vectorization? |
Auto-vectorization is a process
performed by a software program on raster images
of drawings to convert them to vectorized lines,
arcs, circles and sometimes other primitive
shapes such as arrowheads, solids and text. Most
auto-vectorization programs can be run
interactively by an operator or unattended using
a configuration file that provides some limited
control of the vectorizing process. Although the
auto-vectorization technique is usually less
costly than the manual redraw technique, the
quality of the finished drawing is not
comparable to other CAD drawings. The typical
auto-vectorization replaces a lot of little dots
with a lot of short lines and arc segments.
Extensive manual labor is usually required to
make the many corrections required in an
auto-vectorized drawing. |
| |
|
|
| |
| |
