Convert "drawn" diagrams to visio-like diagrams ?
July 21, 2015 4:14 PM Subscribe
Does software exist which will convert "drawn" diagrams to visio-like diagrams ?
Does this exist ?
I have some diagrams which consist of boxes, bubbles and linking lines. They look like what they are, drawn by pen on a sheet of paper.
Is there a process where I could scan the sheet of paper and software would attempt to convert the diagram to something that looked like it was drawn in visio or similar ? Those lines which were vaguely straight would become straight. Those lines which made a rectangle like shape would become a rectangle. Lines which were bubble like would become a regular ellipse.
I have a feeling an answer is going to be "you can do this in Photoshop with the Foo plugin" which is all well and good but if there was something which didn't require me to have to understand / pay for Photoshop that would be good !
Does this exist ?
I have some diagrams which consist of boxes, bubbles and linking lines. They look like what they are, drawn by pen on a sheet of paper.
Is there a process where I could scan the sheet of paper and software would attempt to convert the diagram to something that looked like it was drawn in visio or similar ? Those lines which were vaguely straight would become straight. Those lines which made a rectangle like shape would become a rectangle. Lines which were bubble like would become a regular ellipse.
I have a feeling an answer is going to be "you can do this in Photoshop with the Foo plugin" which is all well and good but if there was something which didn't require me to have to understand / pay for Photoshop that would be good !
potrace won't (as you can make out in the images) "square things up" for you, unfortunately.
posted by andrewcooke at 4:31 PM on July 21, 2015
posted by andrewcooke at 4:31 PM on July 21, 2015
Response by poster: @moonsiinjune: Thanks, better than anything I've had to date, will look into it.
@andrewcooke: No, and that was the sort of thing I was after but still might be better than having to do it all from scratch.
posted by southof40 at 7:22 PM on July 21, 2015
@andrewcooke: No, and that was the sort of thing I was after but still might be better than having to do it all from scratch.
posted by southof40 at 7:22 PM on July 21, 2015
if you were an inkspace god you might know how to simplify the results from potrace and then snap them to a grid. but i suspect it's actually a hard problem.
if it's any use at all, https://github.com/stathissideris/ditaa will do what you want (perhaps) given simple ascii art. unfortunately sourceforge is down, which is where the documentation is. there's a cache at https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:HgraCIbqWREJ:ditaa.sourceforge.net/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk but it doesn't have the result images.
posted by andrewcooke at 7:44 PM on July 21, 2015
if it's any use at all, https://github.com/stathissideris/ditaa will do what you want (perhaps) given simple ascii art. unfortunately sourceforge is down, which is where the documentation is. there's a cache at https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:HgraCIbqWREJ:ditaa.sourceforge.net/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk but it doesn't have the result images.
posted by andrewcooke at 7:44 PM on July 21, 2015
In a way it sounds like what you want is the drawing clean-up feature that the Apple Newton had. The problem is that this type of approach won't work on a scan. It's analyzing the gesture and "neatening" it before saving as a vector line. It (the algorithm) needs to know the line direction, timing (velocity) and so forth.
Do you need to scan paper? Can you draw with a digitizing tablet?
posted by cleroy at 7:45 PM on July 22, 2015
Do you need to scan paper? Can you draw with a digitizing tablet?
posted by cleroy at 7:45 PM on July 22, 2015
There are certainly programs that will tidy up sketches as you draw them (eg. instaviz on iOS), but I don't know of any that can do this from an image of the final diagram.
posted by James Scott-Brown at 4:01 PM on July 24, 2015
posted by James Scott-Brown at 4:01 PM on July 24, 2015
This thread is closed to new comments.
Edit: Here's a quick example with the original bitmap image on the left, and the vectorized version on the right.
posted by moons in june at 4:24 PM on July 21, 2015