Digitizing Engineering Drawings

Does Digitizing Engineering Drawings Make Sense?

    Manufacturing businesses retain a wealth of knowledge in their engineering flat files. While newer drawings are created on AutoCAD, ProEngineer and other off-the-shelf software, engineering functions still need drawings created in earlier software or, in many cases hard copy paper or Mylar drawings.

    Significant time and cost is expended in locating a specific drawing, copying it, and making it available to either your vendor or clients.

    Digitizing Engineering drawings can not only free up valuable storage space taken up by flat file drawers but also make it easier to access and share digital drawings across the organization and with your clients.

    Our client is a manufacturing company with multiple manufacturing locations. Their need was to share many of their drawings between the multiple manufacturing locations and also to be able to send out the drawings to multiple vendors for fabrication. The current process was to take the hard copy drawing, make a copy and then mail the copy to the requesting party. The customer very quickly recognized the large savings potential of digitizing all drawings.

    ARDEM picked up all 3000 drawings at client location and brought them to our processing location. All 3000 drawings were scanned using large format scanners capable of scanning up to 42 inch wide drawings. All digital scans were checked for legibility.  After scanning all drawing scan images  were indexed based on search criteria identified by the client ( Drawing Number, Material Type, Drawing Name). This allowed the client to quickly access and retrieve the scan image of the drawing.

    By digitizing all their drawings the manufacturing operation realized an annual savings of $33,000.00 in storage and retrieval costs. Drawings, as digital scans are now easier to distribute. No office space is taken up by large flat drawers. Clients get their requested drawings immediately and are not waiting for paper copies to come in the mail.