Why Scan and Burn?

On average, 7% of a firm’s operating expenditure is spent on manual document management. Based on square foot storage costs and access times this could be as high as $20.00 per drawing. Too often one overlooks the fact that paper drawings are susceptible to damage over time and manually drafted revisions are costly in a CAD environment.

Capturing paper based assets

Archived paper documentation needs to be accessible at any time. Once documents are scanned they become more valuable, as they are one step closer to the proven CAD environment.

Much like a photocopier, a scanner has threshold or contrast settings. Adjustments allow for all faint lines to be visible, and dark areas to be tempered. PacBlue’s Océ 9800 scanners use an advanced dynamic thresholding method called Image Logic, whereby contrast is modified for every given area. This creates clean scans of drawings that have dark edges or uneven backgrounds. Scan accuracy is measured in DPI, so the higher the DPI the more dots are produced and the larger the raster files become. Most archival applications are best saved at 200 - 300 DPI.

There are a wide range of raster file formats - Group 3 (used in faxes) and 4, PEX, RLC, CALS and Tiff are standards. PacBlue has found that tiff group 3 is the most compatible with current applications such as Photoshop and AutoCAD.
Viewing packages allow for quick access to the drawing database. PacBlue offers Reprodesk 4.1 for quick viewing of scanned drawings, and Autodesk View 2.0 for redline capability.