Digitizing blueprints with Autocad

[g.sanborn]

Can Autocad scan and digitize paper blueprints, or reverse engineer from an
image file? How can Autocad be used to help bid construction jobs and help
do take-offs and materials calculations? Thanks.

Gene Sanborn

[Paul Turvill]

No.

You need additional software to do any of those things.
___

"g.sanborn" <g.sa...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:CzHTa.131734$Ph3.16848@sccrnsc04...

[Charles Sweeney]

"g.sanborn" <g.sa...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:CzHTa.131734$Ph3.16848@sccrnsc04...

> Can Autocad scan and digitize paper blueprints, or reverse engineer from

You need to convert the paper drawings to digital by scanning for example.

Then you can use software to make a vector (line) image from the digital
image.

AutoCAD can than use the vector image.

Check out http://www.ravtek.com this is what they do.
--
Charles Sweeney
Wood and stone hatch patterns
www.HatchPatterns.com

[Paul Jordan]

But, even when it's been converted to vector, it can't be used with any
automated materials take off programs or anything like that.. You basically
have a drawing traced into AutoCad.

Now, if you don't mind sitting there and running various commands, you can
get square footages from different rooms of a building but, unless you have
the information in the drawing, you won't be able to just measure a
re-created drawing and know how much square footage is on say the walls.
That all has to be input fresh with a program like Architectural Desktop or
one of the many other AutoCad add-ons.

But, you need to ask yourself if it's worth all that trouble if you're
dealing with paper blueprints?? Why not just use your old wheel and get the
measurements the old fashioned way if it's an old (pre-cadd) building.. If
it's one built in the last 15 years, you might do some searching for autocad
files and you just might get REAL lucky and find a set made to some sort of
standard and actually be done accurately..

Good luck.. Hope that helped a little..

Paul Jordan
Anchorage, AK

"Charles Sweeney" <m...@charlessweeney.com> wrote in message
news:bfoqru$giphf$1...@ID-162618.news.uni-berlin.de...

[g.sanborn]

What about Quick Bid and On Screen Take-Off (www.oncenter.com) for
traversing a vector (dxf) file anc calculating the materials breakdown?
Oncenter claims to be able to do this with On Screen Take-Off, but I haven't
got a vectorized file or a blueprint in dxf format to try it out yet. I
hope to get something like crucible (thanks for the info) to accomplish
this.

Gene.

"Paul Jordan" <paulj...@gci.net> wrote in message
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