Paper to CAD Conversion Explained
Term "Paper to CAD" within the AEC industry means the process of converting a paper drawing into CAD format. There are some very similar terms: CAD conversion, PDF to DWG, raster to vector, vectorization, paper-to-cad, and some more. "CAD" stands for Computer Aided Design. However, in the context of paper to CAD conversion the term "CAD" implies professional drafting software file formats. As for the term "paper", it refers to a single paper drawing or a set of architectural, civil, electrical, HVAC, structural or other drawings. Three ways of paper to CAD conversion can be used: automatic, semi-automatic, and manual. The first one is performed by scanning a paper drawing and converting it into a CAD format using raster to CAD conversion software. This approach has some drawbacks as long as not every raster to CAD conversion application can recognize text, patterns and dimension lines. As a result the CAD file can contain a mess of lines and ...