The Covid-19 pandemic that kept striking in consecutive waves proved to be quite challenging for various businesses, particularly the construction industry. In such situations, paper to CAD conversion services are of great importance in helping engineering and architectural companies perform smoothly. While things have stabilized now, despite the spread of the Omicron variant that is causing concern, it is essential to prepare for such emergency situations in the future.
How CAD Conversion Helps
CAD conversion refers to digitizing technical drawings or floor plans for architectural and engineering purposes. Technical drawings are integral to architectural projects, but in this digital age it gets hard to carefully store and document paper drawings and plans. Construction firms also rely on maps and geological charts to plan projects. Topographic maps, contour maps, utility maps and other kinds of maps can also be digitized. Weather stations would also benefit from CAD conversion services since they too have maps and weather charts to use.
Benefits for Industrial and Manufacturing Companies as Well
There are also engineering drawings dealing with instrumentation, machine parts, electrical circuits, plumbing systems, etc. These kinds of drawings are all useful for manufacturing firms to design new products or tools, and to design and construct factories. Accuracy is of utmost importance here, particularly in relation to the accuracy and placement of the objects.
The Advantages Digitization Has to Offer
Physical storage of paper drawings and later retrieving them or making changes to them is cumbersome, expensive and time consuming. With physical storage, the documents are susceptible to damage. There could also be data loss.
- Digitization ensures the important drawings and floor plans are stored in servers, and secured with passwords so that only authorized personnel can access them.
- With CAD drafting services, firms can also benefit from high tech modalities such as engineering document management (EDM) and product data management (PDM) for maintaining and managing the CAD drawings.
- With digitized documents, you can include video and audio. Hyperlinks can also be incorporated, making it easier to annotate the document, whereas paper documents have so many restrictions.
- Making revisions to physical drawings and plans is time-consuming and expensive. Your staff would be spending a great deal of their time and effort on manual revisions, which could rather be spent on new projects. It is faster and easier to make corrections to digital documents.
That’s efficiency and speed taken care of right there. - The CAD conversion technique ensures these physical documents are all efficiently handled, stored and maintained electronically. It also ensures these documents are saved from damage or data loss. They can also be easily accessed by authorized personnel with CAD conversion. With efficient document management also offered as part of CAD conversion, your firm functions faster and more efficiently.
CAD conversion is part of the general document conversion services provided by experienced BPO companies. Document conversion solutions include PDF to DOC, DOC to TIFF, Text to HTML, PPT to PDF, Excel to HTML, PSD to XHTML, etc.
Steps Involved in Paper to CAD Conversion
There are two major stages involved in the process of paper to CAD conversion. First, the physical drawings, plans and maps are scanned. They are then digitized with high-end, updated software. In-house CAD conversion units can be expensive for firms to invest in. They also require dedicated staff to operate, not to mention the infrastructural requirements needed to install them. That’s why companies seek CAD conversion outsourcing services. By outsourcing CAD conversion, you can expect around 60% savings.
Advanced CAD conversion services provide high-quality paper to CAD conversion with a high level of accuracy, while ensuring global standards. The formats commonly converted include DWG to JPG or TIFF and DWG to PDF, depending on the requirements of the client company. They also offer image to CAD conversion services. The key here is to ensure a format that’s easier and more efficient for archiving, accessibility and also distribution and publication.
CAD conversion outsourcing services have experienced architects, engineers and draftsmen who are also familiar with high-end software and programming. They can develop AutoCAD routines in the appropriate programming platforms.
Faster Searching and Easier Annotation
When things need to work faster with your business partners, architectural companies must be able to make changes to the plan when they require it. For that, you would need to find minute details in the plan that may require changes. In paper drawings, it is quite difficult to track such minute details. With CAD drawings that are in digitized format, there are many faster searching tools that can help engineers find minute details quickly. No more wastage of time and effort.
What It Takes to Make the Transition to Digital
The digitization process also requires contractors and business partners to transition to the new way of working. Holding on to paper documents could slow you down unnecessarily. While the construction industry is going through a transition phase, it is essential that all the parties involved are made to do it in a faster and more efficient manner. Often, manual archives of plans and documents are used for carrying out deals or agreeing on changes, while CAD documents are available with the firm. This slows down all the entities involved, which beats the point of CAD conversion in the first place.
Outsourcing providers that offer paper to CAD conversion services are important partners for firms in the construction industry since they contribute to the digitization of these companies, making them more resilient, efficient and strong enough to deal with, and even overcome, the challenges the future would bring. However, the staff and partners need to be trained and warmed up to the digitized way of working. The resistant mindset needs to be done away with in such situations.
It also helps to forge close partnerships with CAD conversion and digitization providers that carry out all your digitization requirements. All kinds of document conversion services are essential for companies, and when it comes to sophisticated CAD conversion services, your provider can work with you to ensure they are efficiently integrated into your system. They also have the most innovative and advanced CAD software and tools in their arsenal, which could give you the technical edge. Even your staff can be provided with the required training, so you can do away with the constant hiring and firing process.
It is a brighter future that experienced CAD drafting services can help script for your company.
