Has anyone ever had any paper drawings converted to AutoCAD? Did they scan then edit or just redraw manually? How much did they charge you?

Try a program called Scan2CAD, I’ve had mixed results depending how complex and legible the drawings are.

How precise do you want them to be is the question.

If a simple 2-d drawing of something it shouldn’t take more than minutes to knock up in CAD.

I got some simple CAD drawings made from sketches for £20 through people per hour.

My experience is that when scanned into Autocad it is merely an image and not editable attributes that you get (although there are a lot more software packages now to convert text documents from scanned text)
Not sure on the cost of redrawing in Autocad, but you do get a free 30day trial on Autocad these days if you want to redraw it and have the experience to use it.

A0 sheet, typical architectural construction details, plans, eles, details etc. They need to be spot on really.

If you just need to add detail over it… I.e m&e disciplines you could just scan it to PDF and bring into a dwg then scale it and just draw over the top. Won’t be great definition though?

sounds a lot more complex than mine was so cost will be different, but plenty of CAD drawing technicians / architects on PPH looking for freelance work.

Are you able to use CAD software? You could always download a copy of Draftsight (free) and do it yourself?

Yes, I’m up to speed on AutoCAD but I don’t have an A0 scanner! I was just looking for a ball park cost from someone who may have paid for this kind of work.

I doubt you’ll be able to scan them with the level of detail you need. Copying them is easy work to sub out. It does form part if my day job if you want a proper quote (email in profile) but the earliest I could do it is mid Feb. Ballpark £200 but it really does depend on the complexity.

£200 per sheet?

Sorry never used a third party but have done my own. Cost and time depends on whether the drawings are dimensioned or just to scale (metric or old?) and how complex and of course how many. Appreciate you are looking for a recommendation and not just Google it! May also be worth scanning part of the plans to give folk an idea of details etc. Also do you need specific levels/layers, colours etc?
If you only need a few email me, if you have loads keep looking on t’web, if loads get scans sent to India, seems to be a way, but specify what you need back, layers would be important to me. Good luck.

weeksy – Member

If a simple 2-d drawing of something it shouldn’t take more than minutes to knock up in CAD.

are you my boss? 🙂

I used to do this kind of thing many, many years ago.

I gave my clients the option of either a fixed price quote or an hourly rate. The fixed price quote was based on “how long I thought they’d take” x “hourly rate” + 10%.

An average of £200 for an A0 aheet (depending upon the level of detail) doesn’t sound too bad.

weeksy – Member
If a simple 2-d drawing of something it shouldn’t take more than minutes to knock up in CAD.

are you my boss?

you just press the button and it does it for you doesn’t it ?
(im a cad drafty and hear this all the time)

£190 😉

Started my career working for a company who did exactly this. We’d scan the drawings in as piccies (raster) then ran a routine in a mangled GIS package called smallworld which did the raster-vector conversion. This would output a DXF which some lackie (me) would then crack open and then manually move things around that the routine had mucked up. Generally it would screw up where lines intersected or it might mis-interpret dashed lines as being individual objects rather than lines drawn in a different format. For a laugh it’d also dump everything onto layer 0 apart from the odd object – usually the projection symbols and random bits of text. This was 15 years ago though so i’d hope it might have improved a bit since then.

Actually make that £195, I have a new bike to finance…

SmartDraw is alright for basic plans and very easy to use.

I have access to an A0 scanner…email in profile if needs be…

Can you use a decent resolution photo, rather than a large scanner, then input that to a converter?

All sorted now thanks, I was just looking for guidance on prices really. Thanks for all the good info though.