CompuServe Messages

Owen – unless you have a LOT of large-doc scanning to do, I'd recommend using a service bureau. I use a Houston Instruments Scan-Cad which is a teeny little device (smaller than a hand scanner) but which attaches to the pen holder of my HI plotter, allowing me to scan drawings as large as my plotter can take. The plotter rolls the original back and forth, while the penholder moves the scan head a sideways step at a time. The software that comes with it automatically stitches the strips together. It does an excellent job, but it is SLOW! It takes about 15-20 minutes to scan a D-size drawing at 200dpi (incidentally, it's rarely worth scanning at a higher res than this, if your aim is drawing conversion). Two years ago, I paid about $6k for the Scancad, but I live in Canada, so if you're in the states, you'd probably be looking at about $1,000 less. A dedicated scanner, like Houston Instruments's LDS4000+ costs about twice as much, but if you're dealing with volume, it's many times more than twice as fast. The other big name in large document scanners is Contex. Prices are comparable, and you can choose a D-size or E-size unit (the LDS is E-size only). As Ang pointed out, you should be prepared to do a substantial amount of editing on your automatically-vectorized drawing. Everything will be on one layer, and text comes through as lines and arcs. Using CAD Overlay is more work up front (you recreate the drawing in AutoCAD on top of the scanned image), but you won't have that often messy cleanup at the end. [More]