About

My name is Andrea Tribe. I work for Softcover, publishers and distributors of Scan2CAD raster to vector conversion software. I’ve been involved with Scan2CAD since it was first released in 1995. I love my job.

Selling and supporting raster to vector conversion software is a constant exercise in education. People are trained to be engineers, to be architects, to use CAD software. But they are not often taught about raster images or how to scan a drawing. This can lead to disastrous raster to vector conversion results.

I am often reminded of the excellent film Educating Rita. Rita is a hairdresser. A lady with unfortunate looks comes into the salon, thrusts a photograph of Princess Diana into Rita’s hands, and says “I want to look like that”.

Many peoples’ expectations of raster to vector conversion are the same. They expect to automatically produce a CAD-perfect drawing from a poor quality – sometimes completely illegible – raster image.

This site aims to provide helpful information about scanning, raster images and raster to vector conversion so that those of you who need to do conversions will have the best possible chance of success. Some of the information will be general and will apply to any raster to vector converter. Some will be specifically about our own product, Scan2CAD.

Steve Hannath, Softcover's marketing director.

Steve Hannath makes a braai (barbeque) during a damp English summer: You can take the South African out of South Africa, but you can't take South Africa out of the South African.

Along the way I’ll be helped out by Steve Hannath, Softcover’s marketing director. Steve has long experience of the computer and CAD industries, having published South Africa’s first PC computer magazines back in the days when PCs were still called micro computers. In addition to working with Scan2CAD, Steve is editor of the Scanners4CAD large format scanner news and views online magazine.