The Role of Automatic Digitizers in Computer Aided-design

The incorporation of facilities for automatically digitizing documents can considerably enhance the power of computer graphics in computer-aided-design. A hardware-software process is described which rapidly and economically digitizes hard-copy drawings and translates them into computer data structures which faithfully represent both their geometry (including line widths) and their topology (line connectivities). These data structures may be directly interfaced to standard computer graphic manipulation software or they may serve as a source of information for analytic routines. The system thus allows drawings to serve as an immediate source of data for existing CAD processes. The result is that the tedium and inaccuracies associated with inputting graphic information has largely been removed so that the human may better concentrate his energies in the tasks of design and analysis.