Hi all, I am working on a line tracing plugin that starts with an image, finds all the dark pixles and traces through them. It’s still in process and takes longer time the bigger the picture (as each search checks through a larger database).
Here you can see the image, the pointcloud of dark pixles and the trace result.
Note it is not smart enough to not trace the numbers, and probably never will, but it beats tracing lines by hand 
Hi Holo
It is pretty amazing considering the poor quality of the bitmap.
Have you considered sharing your work for testing?
Well done, Holo. I have so many hand drafted drawings that I would like to scan and put into you plugin, I can’t wait for it to become available. Cheers, Rob
Great plugin, the results look very useful.
Perhaps a curvature checking process after the curves are generated could help resolve this? Smooth out or ignore/skip areas of high curvature.
Great job, Jørgen!!!
Philip
Giving your project further consideration, might it be a good idea to remove numbers, text and the like from the original scan, then run your plug-in adding text and numbers in Rhino afterwards? This might be a ton of work for some projects, but for the majority it may not be so…
Thanks for the reply Robb, I tried both editing them out in photoshop and just joining the curves in rhino and then turn on controlpoints and deleted and adjusted the points there, and doing it in Rhino was actually faster. This tool needs you to review all the output as the pixelated images can in “muddy” areas cause the path finder to go a bit haywire. 
Holo- As I understand it, Illustrator does this now (ImageTrace/LiveTrace).
Rhino can import an AI file saved as CS or earlier…
Are you providing more functionality??
No, not really, I don’t expect it to be better than Illustrator, but not everybody has Illustrator and doing things within Rhino is a nice workflow. I started the project to do fills and needed to trace a large map, so I turned that way instead, and I didn’t knew they had paths as out put now either 
I’ll have to check that out!
They have the process nailed down fairly well.
If you have not already, you might want to check out the open source algorithms for pixel->point conversions.
I believe you can search the ACM Proceedings for some very good information.
Good luck…
I agree with doing things inside Rhino but everybody can download Inkscape or the standalone version of Potrace (which is what is used inside Inkscape).
Sure, but then what shall I do for fun?
Hi Holo, thanks for the sharing. I am currently looking for a tool can trace lines perfectly as what your plugin did. I wonder where I can download your plugin and apply it on something images?
Many thanks
Hi @Jack_Zeng
See if Vectorize might be of use.
HTH, Jakob
Hi Jack, sorry, the script never got finalized so a plugin wasn’t made. I discontinued the development when Vectorize was introduced.
I see, thanks for letting me know.
