Why choose SCAN?

Why should you send your drawings to SCAN? Why pay to scan drawings that have been serving their purpose for the past 10 to 20 even 30 years or more? There is always the old adage “If it ain’t broke, why fix it? ”

What if it breaks? Take the analogy of maintaining an automobile. The vehicle’s owner refills the fluids, changes the oil, spark plugs, filters and belts. The parts are not broken, the car is running fine but still, the owner will make sure that this service is done at regular intervals.

This is called preventive maintenance. Sure the car works fine for now, but what if the oil filter is clogged, the fan belt snaps? What if one of your drawings tear after an eraser goes over a particular spot one too many times? What if, by some freak accident, paint or coffee were spilled on the sheets, or a fire sweeps through the building?

Of course, the above scenarios are just the extreme reasons to why an analog drawing should be converted to digital format. There are many benefits to having manual documents scanned:

Storage Space: Using CD-ROM technology, digital images of documents may be stored by the thousands. A standard 650 MB CD-ROM can hold up to 2400 D-Size (24” x 36”x 300 dpi) images. In paper form, these sheets would take up several storage lockers.

No Degradation of Data: Digital data does not degrade over time. Ink, paper, linen even mylar will begin to crack, fade, and wrinkle after years of use. Given adequate care, a CD is virtually indestructible, ensuring that the data stored within the CD is safe.

Consistency: Different handwriting styles, different pens, pencils, colours, drafting styles, make a set of drawings more confusing to read and ultimately more difficult to understand. “Is this an ‘S or a ‘5’?” Drawings that are converted to vector (CAD) formats will be done to a specific set of parameters and standards. This ensures consistency throughout the entire inventory of converted drawings.

Control: It is common practice that individual departments in an institution keep their own copy of the firm’s drawings. The drawings are updated by each department as required. This is all right if the departments are autonomous. What would happen if a new subdivision were added to a community? The records office would need an updated set of drawings, so would the public works department, the planning department, the 911 system. In a digital system, all that is required is that the master drawing is updated and all the departments need only to access the master file.

Speed: It is true that for most revisions, a capable draftsperson can do the work as quickly using pen and ink as a CAD operator can fling a mouse around. However, if multiple, repetitive revisions are required to multiple sheets, CAD drawings are much easier to manipulate because they have built in features that allow for the copying of existing entities instead of recreating the entity each time one is required.