.pdf to Auto Cad Conversion

This might work for you..

http://anydwg.com/pdf-to-cad.html

http://soft.udm4.com/downloading/jpeg_to_cad/

Sure there are.

http://www.pdf2cad.com/

Are you looking for Free?

There is a trial version, do not know what the limitations are.

I do not use Auto Cad myself but I doubt that an image in .jpg or .pdf format can be folded into the dimensional drawing database of any computer assisted database. I'd be surprised if Auto Cad couldn't allow you to paste an image into a drawing. I expect that you will have to manually transfer the data over.

We tried a trial version of software called Vextracker and it worked somewhat. We took the original drawing and made a .jpg file on our photo copier, then we used Vextracker to turn it into a .dxf file which can be opened in Auto Cad. The trouble is the original drawing was of poor quality and it didn't show the text up very well. I believe it turned them into lines or vectors. I just wondered if anyone has has success in doing conversions that kept the text in tact? We have many old machine prints that would be candidates, if this works. Free would be good but not necessary.

Elroy

Elroy,

Is the purpose to have a workable AutoCAD drawing?

Or is the purpose to have an electronic file that comments can be added to the drawing? Such as a PDF file.

If this is for mechanical design and not architectural drawings, I am suprised that you aren't in the 3D CAD world. (Maybe a small company?)

I have done the vector to raster translation long time ago (15-20 years ago), at the time it worked, though there was some cleanup. I'm sure it improved since then, because the clean up time was close to redoing the information from scratch.

I do expect that a pdf. or jpg. of a mechanical schematic drawing will likely be easier to translate to an Auto Cad drawing, but just like a software translation of a human language there will have to be somebody sifting through each iota to see if it makes sense. As you found out, the verification process may take longer than redrawing it.

I have AutoCad and I'd be interested to know if these work.

I have doubts about this working myself.

There are some things out there... But if you want a decent final product I suggest you redraw it. I've used numerous conversion software packages, some free some not, and not a one of them could accurately re-draw anything of any detail properly. If it's a circle, and a square, you'll probably be fine, but if you want anything with substance.... I wish you luck.

Google thinks it can be done. I expect you might find it can have some success with a high contrast image file, but you might be asked to identify cross-over (under and over) and intersections.

Suggest you drill down a few pages and see what you can find.

Image conversion to autocad

CAD files are a precision instrument. All the others are for publishing. Precision does not even enter that field. So, for any serious work, conversion without your Mark.1 eyeballs, and Mark.0,9 brain, meaningful, workable translation is not possible.

Print it. Enter it straight, and proper. Then you can be confident, when your machine starts up.

I dont have any idea about conversion software that might help. But if it not for anything precise, and you have loads of spare time, you can copy and past a PDF into Autocad, but you have to manually re-draw it, by going over the lines.......its not much fun though.

I have used software called Able2Extract Professional in the past and it works pretty well with PDF files, not sure about jpg files although be sure to scale your drawing to a known fixed dimension when inserted into cad, I have the software so if you wanted to mail me a sample I can try it out for you, Let me know

There are several pdf to cad packages available as others have mentioned. They work to varying degrees but all tend to produce 'dumb' images so that, for instance, circles become a series of short straight lines & you can no longer easily find the centre.

Autodesk make a programme called Raster for importing scanned images, it's not free but you can get a 30 day trial. This allows you to realign images, clean up backgrounds & identify objects like circles so they become true circles. It can be quite time consuming so, as already suggested, it may be easier just to re-draw.

Guys,

I was offered a similar to piece of software by IMSI only yesterday. This was called pdf2cad and was being offered at $129. It produced .dxf files from .pdf files. Whilst I doubt that this will directly do what you want - if it produced .dxf files is there a conversion to AUTOCAD from there?

If I had IMSI version of AUTOCAD -TURBOCAD I might have been interested enough to ask for more information,. I used to run some AUTOCAD shops but never had the cash to buy a Unix workstation and the AUTOCAD software and it's perennial updates - what version are we up to these days?

I cannot, at this remove, remember the differences betwen the two. I remember that we used to run AUTOCAD and something else a bit slimmer and lighter to do quick sketches which could be, manually, turned into full AUTOCAD if desired. Was this AUTOCAD Lite, I wonder - too many years ago!.

Sleepy

I have got aide pdf to DXF and it seems to work pretty well. I think you get about 10 free conversions before you have to buy it ($180)

http://www.aidecad.com/

I tried the free download of Pdf2cad and had slightly less success than Vextracker. What I want to use this for is electrical schematics, which are 2D and reasonably simple. The lines seem to survive the transition fairly well but the text and non linear lines don't do nearly as well. I believe unless there is something better I'm brobably better off to bite the bullet and redraw these files. To be fair to the software I've tried, the original was pretty beat up. I think I'm going to give it one more try on a pristine .pdf file and see how that comes out. I'll let you know.

Thanks for your feedback. Elroy

Just to throw out one more raster to vector converter, we use a program here called "Scan2Cad". It's very flexible, but with that comes a bit of complexity. There are a lot of settings that can be "tweaked" to help you get the best output possible, with consideration of the source. I think their trial version is full-featured, but you do have to register to get it.

www.scan2cad.com

No affiliation with the company, just a user who has gotten some good results from the software.

Tom D.

A few years ago we were tasked to determine if there was some way to scan old paper copy and velum drawings into cad. After some significant research we found that by putting a young designer to the task of redrawing, there was nothing as fast or as accurate. The most important issue was to be accurate. The programs cannot distinguish between hidden, object, and dimension lines. We found that the time spent fixing the drawing up after conversion was always more than operator conversion. Some day there may be a program to do the conversion, but I don't believe that it will be any time soon.

Hi,

I wonder whether the PDF converter I am testing about these days can help with .pdf to Auto Cad Conversion or not? Any good suggestion? Thanks in advance.

Best regards,

Arron

Yes Sir, There is a wonderful tool available for PDF to AutoCAd conversion called as Universal Document Converter. I use it personally for all my AutoCAd files and it goves the result in a jiffy. Also the setting are very basic. help a beginner like me. try it at www.print-driver.com

The site shows conversion to various files but none of them AutoCAD formats?

Using Pdf2Cad I tried a pristine copy of a simple mechanical 2D drawing. It actually turned out pretty well with some loss line integrity and a small but resonable loss of character definition in the text. I would still like to find some sofware that does a better job on text.

Thanks for your help. Elroy

Guys,

I have been back through the thread and would make the following observations.

1 Quality of the source material would seem to be the key to any thing where you are trying to do accurate conversions.

2 Initially one should attempt to get the best possible source material and there ought to be a clean up software process that improves clarity, contrast, legibility etc before the process is commenced.

3 jpeg does not sound like an accurate source file, can we think wider. Can we take RAW photographs of the image and find a format that will allow a more accurate capture; Alternatively can we simply widen the jpeg file or. better still improve the scanned image in width and depth with 64 or 128 bit processing??

4 Another factor that seems to be affecting the process would appear to be trying to capture both lines and text at, presumably, various rotations at the same time. Could this be simplified by doing a Text capture separate to the Image capture with reference marks usable for each? I appreciate that this means more complexity but if it provided a better result then it MIGHT just be worth it?

5 Various contributors have touched on Vector to image transfers and these should obviously be minimised as far as possible as I believe from some 'long ago' research that it was hard to make these conversions lossless.

If this contribution has strayed too far from the original purpose then I am sorry but I was intentionally trying to widen the debate in search of better outcomes for all.

Good Luck

Sleepy

As others have indicated, there is a significant difference between bit map images (i.e., jpeg) and vectorized formats. Another issue to consider is that both *.dxf and *.pdf are actually moving targets. Autodesk essentially drives the *.dxf format definition, and Adobe has a lot of control over the *.pdf standard (although less than the Autodesk control over *.dxf). Autodesk also controls the *.dwg standard. Generally, to enjoy the benefits of the latest *.dxf or *.dwg formats, one must, of course, use Autodesk software (i.e., AutoCAD). When converting a *.pdf or one of the bit map formats, one must be careful about specifying which particular version of *.dxf or *.dwg one is seeking.

On the subject of bit map formats, I personally have found *.png to be much better than *.jpeg- higher resolution preserved, I believe. But, no matter what format, bit map is going to give you considerably less resolution/detail than is possible from a vectorized format.

Now, for practical purposes, I have had occasionally acceptable results importing *.pdf files created in AutoCAD (specufically, architectural drawings) into other CAD software (IMSI TurboCAD to be specific, and IMSI DoubleCAD. I am not sure IMSI refers to the same company for the two different products, although they are similar, and both quite reasonably priced- free versions available, with limitations. I don't know if the free versions allow for *.pdf import). Text is always a problem. I have recently started experimenting with Dassault Systemes DraftSignt2, but have not looked at conversions, per se, but they do seem to adhere to at least one of the *.dwg formats (another Autodesk "standard" that changes with every new version).

We also have a large stock of hand-drafted prints which need to be converted to CAD and we've been investigating available conversion tools. As you said, most free or pay products do a fairly good job of converting the images, but OCR is the weak spot. We have found two products so far which may handle text in an acceptable manner.

1. The Pro version of WiseImage for AutoCad is reported to do well at converting images to AutoCad, including recognizing raster text and converting it to AutoCad text. For sales in Canada contact The Drafting Clinic.

2. AutoDesk has a conversion product called Raster Design with OCR capability. I have not yet found any users with experience on the AutoDesk application.

I have downloaded the trial version of Scan2Cad and found it to be much better than the other software I've tried. It comes with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) but in my first attempt it copied the W as H in most of the drawing and didn't recognise about 5% of the other text. This could be a training issue on my part as there are adjustments available and I am not familiar with them yet.

I will look into Wise Image for Auto Cad and give it a test run.

Thanks for your help Folks.

There are a LOT of settings available in Scan2Cad, that's one of the selling points, they recognize that an "automatic" conversion is probably not going to give the best results.

Tom D.

Good thread with good posts.