Trace Bitmap

[bcd]

I'd like to see this command improved.

For most cases the results are unusable.

[michaelk]

+1

mk

[Kevin McAllister]

+1 It needs a real overhaul. Its ironic that way more VW users likely scan and trace parts of hard copy drawings than those that will initially use point clouds.... yet this command had remained unchanged for many versions.

KM

[Kaare Baekgaard]

For Mac users there are two inexpensive apps, which are quite good:

Super Vectorizer will probably always be better than any buit-in tracing function and it exports to DXF.

PdfGrabber translates pdf drawings into DXF's without making a mess of it.

Edited November 9, 2015 by Kaare Baekgaard

[PVA - Admin]

I actually have this filed as a bug currently. Adding this thread to it for support.

In the below image you can see that it can't even pick up the clear color differences between the orange and white, it is ONLY looking for the darkened shadow areas and treating them as if they were lines.

Tracing over or converting scanned-in images is an extremely common workflow for nearly all of our industries and ours should work much better than this.

[Jim Smith]

+1

I've just been consulting with a friend in the TV industry who uses many pieces of kit including Vectorworks, & they scan drawings many times a day. One of the reasons (in his opinion) that more people in TV & Film don't use VW is this flaw.

Edited November 9, 2015 by Jim Smith

[Andy Broomell]

I've also found that adjusting the settings in the dialogue box has literally no effect on the outcome of the conversion. I pretty much never use this function since it works so poorly.

[Benson Shaw]

+1 for improvements!

@KaareB - Thanks for the tip

-B

[kongdesignld]

+1

[mjm]

Okay: Just tried, then immediately purchased Super Vectorizer, even tho I think the price is steep. The four to seven times a year I'll use it will pay for it in one cycle.

Fantastically powerful yet simple tool.

This is something Nemetschek should consider purchasing and embedding into VWX.

Thanks for the recommendation Kaare!

[Art V]

Okay: Just tried, then immediately purchased Super Vectorizer, even tho I think the price is steep. The four to seven times a year I'll use it will pay for it in one cycle.

Fantastically powerful yet simple tool.

This is something Nemetschek should consider purchasing and embedding into VWX.

Thanks for the recommendation Kaare!

+1

Though a really good vectorizer is not cheap. I've tried a few even though the outcome was not bad it wasn't always very useful either depending on the complexity of the drawings.

At times it required so much time cleaning up that I might as well redraw the whole thing.

For relatively "simple" drawings it would be nice if the tracing in VW would actually usable, so yes it can use quite a bit of improvement.