KBSI investigated and demonstrated the conversion of CALS Type I raster mechanical drawings to parametric vector format and to parametric 3D solid models, improving electronic commerce, competitive reprocurement, and maintenance for related systems.
This initiative investigated and demonstrated the conversion of CALS Type I raster mechanical drawings to parametric vector format and to parametric 3D solid models by leveraging KBSI’s “Vector to 3D” (3VD) technology. Raster drawings consume storage space and network bandwidth, have a finite resolution, often suffer from poor image quality, and are expensive to maintain and edit. These limitations impact electronic commerce, competitive reprocurement, and maintenance.
None of the many raster-to-vector conversion products currently available produces parametric vector drawings (PVDs). In PVDs, the text and symbols are bi-bidirectionally associated with the drawing’s geometry, so a change to a dimension will cause a change to the geometry of the drawing. Conversely, in a vector drawing, a change to a dimension will have no effect on the geometry.
In fact, some raster-to-vector products convert the text into vectors, wholly ignoring text legibility. In the R2P initiative, KBSI developed technology that will allow further processing of drawings and convert the vector file to a solid file format. As a commercial product, this tool will enable billions of drawings to be inexpensively converted to parametric CAD thus extending the usefulness of legacy data and decreasing their maintenance costs.