let's look at the simple process of converting a raster file to a vector file in other words vectorization if you're not sure what a raster file is it's just an image file like a BMP jpg PNG and so on we're going to vectorize this architectural image this image comes with every copy of scanned cad and it will be in your samples folder first let's tell scans cad what type of drawing this is so in this case we click type and architectural by clicking type again and then going down to settings we can alter parameters for this type of drawing but in this case we're going to keep all perimeters as they are by default at the upper right hand side of your tool bar you'll see OCR for OCR conversion BEC for vectorization and all to do both we're going to use scandic as a character recognition and vectorization so we're going to hit all now we see an overlay of the vectors over the raster image if we click the I with a gray line under it we see raster we click the eye with red line under it we see vector now let's look at how we vectorize an image of a totally different type we look at a stencil which again is in every copy of scans CAD in the samples folder let's again tell scans CAD what type of drawing this is so we choose type then outline and again by clicking type then settings we can alter the parameters for this type of drawing in this case we're going to keep the settings as they are by default because there's no text on which we need to perform OCR we can just choose back for vectorization and then if we click the I with the red line under it we'll see vectors alone which in this case is a clean and precise outline of the raster image