To compete in today's world, a company has to deliver the best product or service at a fair price, in the shortest time to market, and do so in a fast-growing, technologically driven environment. One way to gain an edge on competitors is to use the tools and processes that efficiently update the tremendous amount of engineering documents that most companies maintain.

CAD provides the most productive environment to manage and modify engineering documents. In the U.S about 20% of all drawings are produced in a CAD format, with another 25% serving as CAD revisions of older drawings. This means that an astonishing 55% of all drawings are generated the old fashioned way - with traditional pencil and paper drafting.

The annual cost of filing, copying, and preparing these manually generated engineering documents for distribution will exceed $1 billion, according to Document Management Magazine, Scottsdale, AZ. With a current total of approximately 3.5 billion manually produced engineering drawings, and 26 million more added annually, the industry throws away millions of dollars each year by manually modifying engineering documents

Although CAD systems have become commonplace in most engineering offices, the integration of traditional drafting and CAD has just begun. To further enhance that integration, companies should convert their manual drawings to CAD-based drawings. There are two scanner-based technologies that will reduce the millions of dollars wasted manually updating engineering drawings: CAD conversion and raster drafting. CAD conversion offers the most advantages, including substantial savings, increased drawing value, and improved drawing management.

A recent study revealed that each manual revision takes 16 hours. The same revisions using CAD takes only 2 hours. Research also shows that the typical cost savings range from $50 to $500 per drawing depending on the revision, size, type, and information density of the drawing. These savings alone justify the cost of going from manual modifications to automated CAD conversion processes.

Once manually produced drawings are in the CAD format, the uses and value of the information increases dramatically. For example, intelligent CAD files can be used with cost-estimating programs, facility site planning, engineering-design and analysis programs, or numerically controlled machining in manufacturing.

The alternative method to CAD conversion is raster drafting. It works best with drawings that do not require the vector intelligence necessary for traditional analysis work. This method provides the fastest editing process and is the most cost effective.

Because both scanning methods require a one-time cost, all revisions after the first yield even greater savings, and, in turn, reduce the overall cost of managing a drawing throughout its useful life. These savings result in earlier paybacks for the scanning, conversion equipment, and software.

For even greater savings using these scanning methods, it is recommended that companies establish a standard filing system for active and/or converted paper drawings. This decreases the amount of engineering time spent searching for drawings (at an average cost of $32.50 per retrieval) and reduces the number of lost drawings. By using raster scanning to file drawings electronically, the cost per square foot to store paper drawings may also be reduced.

When it comes to obtaining a competitive edge, CAD conversion and raster drafting let companies project consistent, progressive, and high-quality images to their clients and employees. Companies must stop wasting valuable resources and instead begin automating the handling of engineering documents. CAD conversion and raster drafting are relatively easy to implement and reduce the million’s of dollars wasted on revising manually produced drawings.