Scan to CAD work almost always ends up at the bottom of the pile in an in-house drawing office. It is repetitive, it produces little visible result internally and it rarely sits on a schedule with a hard date attached. Meanwhile, part of the drawing set only exists as a paper print or a scan.
Every revision therefore takes longer than it should, because someone first has to work out exactly what is on that sheet and whether it is still correct.
Errors in the old set stay put and move along with it to the next project. OutsourceCAD takes that work off your hands. We provide outsourced CAD drafting to companies that lack drafting capacity of their own, and converting scanned and outdated material into usable CAD files is a standard part of that. We draft, we do not do engineering and we do not carry out calculations. The work is carried out remotely from our own office, following the drawing conventions you provide.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
Scan to CAD on an as-built file that was a mess
The clearest example of scan to CAD in our own work comes from an as-built file for Firefly. The material we received consisted of drawings that had been printed incorrectly and had partly been drawn by hand. Lines ran into each other, parts were hard to read and the set was messy. In a situation like that, it is tempting to call the client about every unclear point. We worked it out ourselves and still delivered it cleanly. That was a deliberate choice. A client outsources this work to save time, and that saving evaporates as soon as the project leader is fielding ten questions a day.
What we took from that project is now standard practice. We first take stock of the entire set supplied before anyone starts drafting, so it is clear which sheets contradict each other. We collect unclear points and raise them together at the progress meeting rather than one at a time. Where the material allows, we derive a missing dimension from the rest of the drawing instead of making an assumption.
Where that is not possible, we flag the point so it ends up on your desk and does not quietly disappear into the new set. This approach takes a little more time at the start than drawing lines straight away. Further along it pays off, because no extra revision round is needed for errors that were already in the source material. The work then passes through at least three review layers before it leaves our office, which keeps the number of errors to a minimum in practice.
What scan to CAD delivers in drawings
Within scan to CAD, we deliver 2D drafting and, where needed, 3D modelling, as-built drawings and revisions. In practical terms, that means floor plans, elevations, sections, details and schematics rebuilt in CAD from the material you supply. We do not trace lines over an image and we do not leave the scan in the file as a background. The result is a proper drawing with real geometry, with layers, blocks and text that remain fully editable. Where handwritten notes were added to the old set, we convert them into text in the correct style and on the correct layer.
We carry over dimensions where they are present and reliable. If a detail or a piping schematic keeps recurring, we build it properly once and then insert it as a component, which saves a great deal of time at high volumes. As output we supply DXF, DWG, Revit formats and STEP files, as well as any other common CAD format requested. If the result needs to go into a Revit model, we build it directly in Revit rather than taking a detour through AutoCAD. We always work with the latest versions of Revit, AutoCAD and Rhino, as well as Inventor, Grasshopper and, to a limited extent, Dynamo and Vault.
What we do not do is engineering. We do not carry out calculations, give structural advice or handle permits. This is drafting and modelling work, often in high volume and with a lot of repetition. It is precisely that repetition that makes this kind of work well suited to outsourcing.
No ongoing payroll costs and no idle staff once the peak is over. If one of our people is off sick or on holiday, we replace them and the work simply carries on.
The finished set after scan to CAD
A set that comes out of scan to CAD has to fit into the process that is already running. That is why we do not deliver one large package at the end, but in stages. You receive a first batch, give feedback, we make adjustments and carry on with the rest. That way it becomes clear early on whether the structure matches what your drawing office is used to, rather than when hundreds of drawings are already finished. The set contains the drawing itself, structured according to the layers and naming conventions we were given. Blocks and families are included the way you want to keep using them, not as loose lines that happen to look like a symbol. We fill in title blocks according to the existing layout. Wherever we have had to make an assumption, it is traceable rather than hidden.
The next step in the process then determines the format. If the set moves on to a production environment, STEP is often the obvious choice. If it stays within a building project, a Revit model fits better with what happens next. If your drawing office simply carries on working in AutoCAD, we deliver DWG. For standalone drafting jobs, we exchange files by email. On larger projects, such as greenhouse construction projects, we use software you can log into to follow the project, so progress does not have to be pieced together from an email thread. The intellectual property of everything we produce belongs to the client, so the set can be used, modified and shared within your own team without restriction.
Scan to CAD to your own CAD standards
Scan to CAD only makes sense when the new files match the way your drawing office works. We therefore work to your CAD standards and drawing conventions, which you provide to us. That covers layer structure and layer names, line weights and line types, hatching, text styles and dimension styles, and the way title blocks are filled in. We also adopt your file naming, because a set with our own names would never be found again in your archive later.
If there is no documented standard, we derive one from the existing set and present our assumptions before we continue. At that point we do not invent anything ourselves.
On a revision round on existing DWGs this is decisive, because the new drawing sits alongside old files and must not stand out from them. We regularly come across templates that have become cluttered over the years. We can clean up existing families and templates or build new ones, and which is wiser depends on the state of the existing set. If a family set is very messy, rebuilding it is sometimes quicker than repairing it. We present that trade-off along with what it will deliver going forward, so you can make the choice.
Compliance checks are built into the process itself. A drafter draws, a second team member checks that work, Sam as team leader then reviews it and Barry as project manager carries out the final check. Those extra pairs of eyes take little time and prevent a deviating layer name from spreading across hundreds of drawings.
Frequently asked questions about scan to CAD
Hand your scan to CAD work over to us
Send us your documents and drawing conventions and we will let you know within one to two working days what we can take on and when.