Hello.
I have what is probably an odd question. I work in a plant that runs cutting and engraving cnc machines off of AutoCAD files. The CAD and cutting/engraving are essentially a 2D process, and we have older versions of AutoCAD to run them off of.
We often receive panels that have been produced by other companies and are asked to produce replicas. So to convert them into AutoCAD I generally have to take various measurements and then draft the dwg.
What my supervisor would like is a means of taking an image of the panels we receive and translate those directly into AutoCAD to save the time and effort that measuring everything by hand entails. I am dubious about the practicality of this, but nonetheless I need to gather some information to see if this is possible, costs, etc.
So far I've come up with two potential solutions. First is to use a handheld 2D scanner. This is problematic, however, since the panels we receive often have parts in them (such as switches hot glued into cutouts in the panel) that are difficult to remove. This would seem to make the 2D scanner impractical, since my understanding is that you have to have a perfectly flat surface to obtain an image, you can't, say, hover the handheld above the object in question.
The second would be to obtain a 3D scanner, which is something I know little about. But my understanding is you would have to get a 3D rendering program such as Maya (which is unlikely for us), and even if we did so we would still have to translate the 3D to 2D, which, again, may be impractical or impossible.
The possible third solution would be to maybe have a digital camera set up so that it takes a straightened and centered photo of the panel, although I suspect this would entail some distortion that might take as much effort to correct as simply measuring and drafting the panel.
So, that's where I am at right now. Does anyone have any ideas on how to make this work? Are any of these ideas feasible or do you have other options in mind? Any help is appreciated. Thanks.
