Clean and Convert Your Raster Scans

Five raster-to-vector solutions speed up conversion of paper drawings to digital files

Scanning in paper drawings is the easy part. To convert the raster (bitmapped) images that result into vector graphics that you can manipulate in your CAD program, you need raster-to-vector software. Scanners capture drawing data in binary files. Service bureaus and large organizations with thousands of paper drawings typically use large-format document scanners from companies such as Vidar and IDEAL (see the hardware review of current models), but desktop scanners that costs about $100 work just as well to capture details or letter-size areas from larger documents. Scanning alone is rarely enough to generate satisfactory electronic drawings. At a minimum, you must clean up the scanned drawings, remove excessive speckles, and deskew the image so horizontal and vertical linework looks straight. Once raster images are clean, you can edit them. For example, you can rubbersheet a scanned contour map—stretch it over any number of points until the image ends up in an almost exact correlation with the real topography.

	Hitachi updates Image Series software Raster-to-vector tools work with AutoCAD Release 14–2000i Just as the deadline for CADALYST's 2001 review of raster-to- vector software arrived, we received a press release from Hitachi Software Global Technology announcing the release of its Image Series 6 image-editing and raster-to-vector software for AutoCAD. Image Series 6 is made up of four modules: Image Edit is an image cleanup and raster-editing program that features raster line editing and rubbersheeting. It supports black-and-white, grayscale, and color files. Image Tracer focuses on interactive raster-to-vector conversion and includes semiautomatic features such as line following and automatic creation of lines, arcs, and circles. Image AutoTLX provides fully automatic raster-to-vector conversion, including text recognition and automatic recognition and conversion of lines, arcs, circles, and polylines to vector entities. Image AutoSymbol recognizes repeating symbols in scanned images. According to Hitachi, Image AutoSymbol "recognizes alpha and numeric characters and automatically populates the appropriate attribute fields within the block to eliminate the tedious manual insertion of the block and typing the attribute text." Image AutoSymbol also batch processes so you can extract symbols from mul-tiple image files. Image Series 6 programs are compatible with AutoCAD Release 14, 2000, and 2000i. The programs are available as a bundle for $4,500. Contact Hitachi for individual module pricing. 800.447.2579, x217, info@hsgt.com. Image Series 6's AutoSymbol module locates and replaces raster symbols with AutoCAD blocks, eliminating the need to manually locate and insert blocks in scanned drawings. It also recognizes letters and numbers and populates the appropriate attribute fields in an AutoCAD block.

For some jobs, raster editing alone produces an image useful enough to attach to an AutoCAD drawing. AutoCAD Release 14 introduced the capability to combine raster and vector images in a single drawing, although you have to store the images in separate files. Sometimes, however, scanned and edited raster image files must be vectorized. This process literally turns a scanned image into a drawing file.

Today's scanners often print directly from the scan (scan-to-print) and offer the option of scan-to-file. To generate better-looking printed documents, they use error diffusion that adjusts the raster image. Unfortunately, image files with error diffusion are much more difficult to vectorize satisfactorily, and many people get turned off because of poor results.

The players
The five software programs we review offer tools to clean up raster images, edit raster images more substantially, and convert the raster data to vectors that you can work on in a CAD program. Two programs are AutoCAD 2000i plug-ins, and the other three are stand-alone programs. They range in price from $249 to $3,900.

We invited eight raster-to-vector program vendors to participate. Autodesk, GTX, Rasterex International, Softcover International, and softelec sent in software. Hitachi wasn't able to get its software to us in time for the comparative review, but see the sidebar to the right for more on its new product.

In December 1999, we looked at an even dozen programs, all of which were capable of fully automatic raster-to-vector conversion. This time, one program (Autodesk CAD Overlay 2000i) doesn't offer automatic vectorization—but that doesn't mean it's a poor choice compared with the other four programs. CAD Overlay offers an extensive set of tools for raster cleanup and editing. It simply takes a different philosophical approach to the vectorization side of the process. Surprisingly few of the programs have been substantially revised since we last looked at them.

One big change involves Rasterex's RxAutoImage COLOR PRO R5. Rasterex ended its relationship with Consistent Software, the Russian company that coded its software for the last decade, and licensed a different line of software from softelec GmbH in Germany. Yes, that's the same softelec that produces VPStudio. In other words, softelec GmbH is now in the curious position of competing with its own distribution channel.

How I tested the software
I evaluated the five programs on my aging 266MHz Dell Pentium II desktop machine with 128MB and SCSI peripherals. This system runs Windows NT 4, service pack 5.

As with previous reviews, I broke the desired feature sets into three broad categories: image cleanup, raster editing, and raster-to-vector conversion.

Image cleanup covers despeckling, deskewing, and other tasks that affect the image as a whole. Raster editing moves from the whole image to specific areas and includes raster object recognition and raster snap, raster layering, merging raster data into a single file, and rasterization.

Raster-to-vector conversion is the main course. The standard features I look for are the type of vectorization the software performs and advanced features such as text and pattern recognition. For a complete feature comparison table, see the features index.

Excellence in raster-to-vector software
This is a uniformly excellent batch of raster-to- vector software. Because vectorization isn't as necessary as in the past, all the programs have focused on their raster features. All do a good job, but softelec has worked on the error diffusion problems that many new scanners introduce and Softcover International virtually doubled its cleanup and raster-editing features.

I still don't like dongles. I believe that any form of copy protection inconveniences the legitimate user while doing nothing to stop illegitimate ones from using cracked software.

You won't go wrong with any program here—each one has many strengths and very few weaknesses, as you can see from the minor quibbles I mention.

	Reviewer's Report Card
	Importance Factor Raster editing (X5) Image cleanup (X4) Vectorization features (X4) Price (X2) Documentation (X1) Hardware lock Star rating Autodesk CAD Overlay 2000i A A N/A A- A No 5 GTX CAD Plus 2000 A A+ A- B+ A Yes 5 Rasterex RxAutoImage COLOR PRO R5 A A+ A- B+ C Yes 4.5 stars Softcover Scan2CAD Pro 6 A A- B+ A++ A No 5 softelec VPStudio 6.73 A A+ A- B+ A Yes 5