How automatic vectorization works
The drawing is rendered at high resolution, cleaned and separated from its background. Detection identifies straight lines, closed circles, ellipses and text regions and writes entities such as LINE, CIRCLE, ELLIPSE and TEXT.
Why scans create fragments
A printed line has thickness, noise and gaps. Detection may see both sides of a stroke or split it around intersections. Cleanup must merge collinear segments, remove duplicates and ignore isolated marks.
Circles, arcs and curves
Closed circles and oval shapes can often become real CAD entities. Partial arcs, splines and irregular rounded outlines are less certain because only part of the curve is visible.
What happens to text?
OCR can create editable text, but small dimensions and abbreviations can be misread. Verify critical annotations against the source.
What cannot be recovered?
- Original layers and block definitions.
- Properties removed during PDF export.
- Hidden or cropped geometry.
- Exact dimensions without a scale reference.
- The technical meaning of every symbol.
Automatic conversion or manual redraw?
Automatic vectorization is useful for clear linework. Manual redrawing is preferable when continuous geometry and structured layers matter more than speed. Read about scanned drawing conversion.