[2_many_hobbies]

Does anybody here use Tormachs new scan cad program?


I gave it a download an imported a drawing of a part in two black and white to see how well it works. To me it did not work so well.. When I watched the videos it shoes the user hovering over an edge in the image and it automatically detecting the curve or line of it. I though this would be fantastic but I don't think the program does this at all. Essentially is it just a background image that you can use to draw on top of?

Is anybody using it or another software package similar to it?


I ask as 99% of my projects involve making fixtures and things that are quite difficult to measure such as multiple curves. I am planning on having a 720p camera scan the part like the videos show but then have it automatically trace the edges out so all you need to do is scale it instead of a complete redraw by hand.


I found a program called Scan 2 Cad that is essentially a raster to vector converter but its internals cannot handle images with much color and i end up speeding a few hours in photoshop cleaning up the image first.

[cyclestart]

Does anybody here use Tormachs new scan cad program?

You've probably seen the discussion in the Tormach forum
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=106444
Posters are still setting up their cameras/scopes

Essentially is it just a background image that you can use to draw on top of?

From the readme:
"The licensed version of Tormach CNC ScanCAD? includes a hardware (dongle) key that allows you to save and export drawings in the .dxf format."
So what does the demo do ? Possibly not much.

Is anybody using it or another software package similar to it?

I searched for software that can stitch together a collection of images collected from a series of known coordinates. Stuff for map makers but not sure how to apply this directly with any precision. Also found some software used in labs to stitch together images collected by microscope using an x-y positioning table. This software is free but complex.
My thought is many images must be collected to avoid parallax

[cyclestart]

Another possibility ?
http://vectormagic.com/home
the pro version outputs dxf

Still leaves the problem of creating the "mosaic"

btw parallax? bafflegab on my part. I was thinking of the distortion on the edges of a photo but don't know the correct term

[2_many_hobbies]

Hey,

For stitching the image together I use autostitch which works great for digital camera images but requires some setup for the mosaic because of all the different shadows.

I will give Vector Magic a try today and see if it can handle an example picture off of the tormach website and then one of mine in comparison.