Scan2CAD Hints & Tips - Carlson Software

Raster Quality ChecklistFuzziness is most common in JPEG images, sotake care not to save your image in JPEG format.Overlaid informationThe drawing on the rightcontains a lot of overlaiddata.Sadly, Scan2CAD is nothuman. It doesn’t knowthat it is looking at textand a wiring scheduleoverlaid on a building plan.All it sees are blackpatterns on a white background and it is not goingto be able to separate the data.You are not going to be able to get a sensible... continuedvectorization from an image with overlaidinformation. There is nothing you can do aboutthis.Low resolution linesIf shapes in your image aredefined by only a fewpixels and look jagged, asin the image on the right,your image is too lowresolution. This is particularlycommon in logos anddrawings with fine detail.The drawing needs to berescanned at a muchhigher resolution - aim for lines that are about 5pixels thick.Raster Text Quality ChecklistScan2CAD has a capability for converting raster text to vector textusing OCR. When you convert raster text using OCR, the vectortext is proper editable text rather than a series of uneditable linesand arcs.Scan2CAD’s OCR recognizes raster text where the followingconditions are met:• The raster text is easily legible.• The raster text characters do not touch each other.• The raster text characters do not touch other drawing elements.• The raster text characters are not at different orientations.• The raster text characters are in a font that Scan2CAD canrecognize.To ensure that your text meets these conditions, work through thefollowing Raster Text Quality Checklist.First, place your cursor over a piece of text on your image.Press M to Magnify. Press M again and again until your image ishighly magnified. Or, zoom in by scrolling your mouse wheelforward. To zoom out again, click .Is the text easily legible?If you cannot read the texteasily, as in the examplesbelow, Scan2CAD won’t be ableto read it either.If the text is not easily legible,the only remedy is to start offwith a better quality rasterimage.If this is not possible, you willhave to retype the textmanually. You can either do thisin Scan2CAD (see Typing overpoor quality text included withthese Hints and Tips) or in yourCAD program after you haveimported the converted file intoit.You may want to erase areas ofvery poor quality text from theraster image so that these areasare not vectorized to lines andarcs.Are the characterstouching?Scan2CAD cannot recognizecharacters that touch othercharacters, even if thecharacters are only connectedby a few pixels:If the characters touch, tryselecting OCR > Settings >Split before doing OCRrecognition. When this option isselected Scan2CAD will attemptto split and identify touchingcharacters.This will improve textrecognition on some rasterimages, however on others itmay result in a lot of “junkcharacters” being recognized.This is because characters thattouch are often very poorquality and are unrecognizableeven after splitting. Forexample, the characters in theexample above have “bled”. Notonly has this caused them totouch each other but it has alsofilled in the “A”. This means thatthe “A” is no longer typical ofStuck? Questions? Email us at postmaster@softcover.com. Web: www.softcover.comPage 6© Softcover International Ltd 2002-2006. Scan2CAD is a registered trademark of Softcover International Ltd.