Large Format Scanning and Blueprint Scanning

• Keep your blueprints and reproduce them as needed
• Invest in an expensive blueprint scanning system and perform the conversion yourself
• Contract with a Service Bureau to scan your drawing for you

Is Blueprint scanning cost effective?

If disaster recovery is not a concern and you seldom ever recall your old blueprints, there is no need to scan them. Additionally, if the space the drawings are housed in, is inexpensive (garage or basement), scanning may not be cost effective. Only scan what makes sense.

If disaster recovery is important to you, get someone like me to scan your drawings as soon as possible. Your drawings may be irreplaceable and that makes them priceless. If you were able to insure 10,000 paper drawings for life, for a one time premium, would you do it? The premium on such a policy is only about $15,000, are your drawings worth it?

Frequently sending drawings out for reproduction or constantly referring to paper drawings should prompt you to consider scanning your large format paper now. Paper is just not practical, office space, drawing reproductions, disaster recovery, and increased productivity should be all the justification you need to scan your drawings as soon as possible.

Should I scan my own drawings or have a service bureau do it for me?

In order to implement a blueprint scanning solution you will need employees, an expensive large format scanner and the right software. If your drawings contain trade secrets or are sensitive in some way, sending them out may not be an option. In any other case, send them out. I’m sure you can find better things for you staff to do. High end large format scanners and software are very expensive and the process is very time consuming.

Scanners to be used

Contex scanners use a four-channel CCD as opposed to CIS-based scanners which use only one channel. Single channel CIS-based scanners have difficulty reproducing accurate colors and tend to create images with more noise. CCD’s capture more pixels with more accurate color details.

Optics is also very important when it comes to large format scanning. The lenses primary purpose is to transfer crisp, clean and clear images back to the sensors. Scanning at 600 dpi with a low quality lens will produce images that will be inferior to a quality lens scanning at 400dpi. Contex scanners use only the highest quality lenses. Learn More

A good large format scanner scans 3 inches per second at 400dpi in 24 bit RGB. If your are scanning a 48 inch long drawing it will take about 16 seconds to scan one drawing. These scanners have no automatic document feeder and therefore, scanning is manual process. 


 If your documents are rare or delicate C size drawings that can not be sheet-fed through a scanner, we can scan you documents on our Contex 18” flatbed scanners.


Scanner Cost

Wide format scanners cost between $9,000 - $30,000. Don’t forget to add the cost of the people actually doing the scanning for you into the equation. Additionally, you will need software to index, search and retrieve drawings once they are scanned.

Outsourcing Costs

An average price for scanning an E size drawing at 300dpi is $1-2. The more time a service bureau is given to complete a project the cheaper they can make it for you. Indexing these documents will usually cost extra. Using a service bureau frees you from buying any hardware, software, and integration services. Do you really want to hire additional support staff to run and operate your new large format system? 

Call us today for a free quote.