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So, say you have a raster file, whether it be an image file or a raster PDF that you want to import into Fusion 360, but you don’t want to have to go through the hassle of manually tracing over the raster file to effectively vectorize it. And this is where Scan2CAD comes in. Let’s open up an image of a spanner here. The first thing we wanna do when we open up the file is click on clean image to clean up the image just a little bit. Clicking on the threshold option here turns the image black and white. You can edit the threshold level just to see if it produces a cleaner output. We don’t want any of these holes, so increasing the threshold levels gets rid of them. We still have a little bit of editing to do with this hole. So, you can actually click on, remove speckles and holes here to get rid of that as well. So, it’s all clean now. For good measure, since the edges are a bit jagged, let’s click on smooth. If you’re happy with what you see on the preview window here, click on okay.
The next step after we’re done editing this and cleaning it up is to click on, convert raster image, right next to the clean image button. For this particular image, I think we’d want to go with the outline method. Let’s click on run, see what that does. Okay. So, if you wanna see how the converted vector lines stack up to the original raster image, you can actually cycle through these tabs. You can go on both and then click on, highlight vectors to see the vector lines on top of the original raster here on the both tab. I’ve actually followed it pretty well. It smoothened some of the more jagged edges as well. As you can notice there are different colors for different types of vector lines. So, if you’re happy with this, once again, let’s click on okay. And the last step is just to click on export here on the upper right.
Now, there are three options for vector formats that you can use, DXF, DWG and G-Code. By default, it’s DXF. Fusion 360 can actually handle DXF or DWG, so pick whichever one you want to use. So, name the file whatever name you wanna name it. In this case, I’m just gonna name it, converted, and then we click on save. So, one thing that I have to mention is sometimes that this option is going to be ticked, mainly because Scan2CAD actually save vector files on the assumption that you’re gonna be using them on common CAD software. So, common CAD software actually usually uses dark colored backgrounds, so by default, this is going to be ticked. So, make sure to untick this since Fusion 360 has a white colored background, so the black vectors stay black. Just click on okay, and then that should be good. You can go ahead and open up the file that we just saved on Fusion 360, and there’s no need to trace over it because it’s already a vector file.