Automatic Scanning and Interpretation of Engineering Drawings for CAD-Processes

Abstract

Successful future product development will be closely connected to an effective way of using CAD-facilities integrated in a CIM-environment. The integration aspect cannot be seen without concentrating on information processing and information acquisition problems. Todays CAD-systems do not provide possibilities for automatic capture of engineering drawing information. The increasing amount of existing engineering drawings - which in large part contain companies' know how - cannot be modified or accessed by CAD-systems, but may not be neglected in design processes using CAD-systems. Therefore, a real demand for convenient conversion methodes for engineering drawings can be stated. In this paper actual and new possibilities for the automated conversion of engineering drawings into CAD-models are discussed. After a global description of the conversion process. problems as well as existing and future solutions of processing substeps are explained in detail. The structure in principal and components of conversion systems are described. The paper closes with an outlook on future trends and improvements using special hardware, parallel processing features and knowledge based methodes.