Image to DXF
sketch and photo to editable CAD
Upload a hand sketch, a photo of a printed plan or a scanned drawing. Get back vector geometry on AEC layers — editable in AutoCAD, not a picture pasted into CAD.
No credit card. AI budget included for testing.
How it works
Upload the image
A phone photo of a sketch, a scan of an old plan, or a screenshot. PNG, JPG, WEBP or BMP, up to 20 MB.
Set the scale
Readable dimensions in the image are used to calibrate. If there are none, you give one known measurement — a door width is enough.
Download editable DXF
Standard DXF in millimetres with named layers. Open, edit and build on it in any DXF-capable application.
What you can convert
Anything that shows a drawing clearly enough for a person to read it.
Hand sketches
The sketch from the site meeting, drawn on paper. Wall runs, room outlines and openings become CAD geometry you can dimension and refine.
Photos of printed plans
A phone photo of a plan on the table or on a wall. Useful when the only copy of an existing building's drawings is on paper.
Scanned archive drawings
Old scans of buildings that were never drawn in CAD. Recover a working base instead of redrawing from zero.
Renders and screenshots
An image from another tool that you need as editable geometry — a layout, a furniture arrangement, a detail from a manufacturer's page.
Reconstruction, not raster tracing
The complaint about image-to-CAD tools is consistent: cleaning up the output takes longer than redrawing. That happens when a converter follows pixels instead of reading the drawing.
| Criterion | Raster tracing | NormArchAI |
|---|---|---|
| What it produces | Thousands of short contour segments | Wall runs, openings and annotations as distinct elements |
| Layers | Everything on one layer | AEC layers: walls, openings, dimensions, text |
| Scale | Pixel units, rescaled by hand afterwards | Millimetres, calibrated from a dimension in the image or one you supply |
| Editing afterwards | Delete stray segments before you can work | Select an element and change it |
Input and output
Questions
How accurate is the result?
It depends on the source image. A clean scan with readable dimensions converts far better than a skewed phone photo of a faded print. Treat the output as a working base a designer verifies and completes — the same way you would treat a survey drawing from a third party. It is not a substitute for measuring the building.
Do I have to know the scale beforehand?
No. If the image contains readable dimensions, they are used to calibrate. If it does not, supply a single known measurement — a standard door leaf, a room side you have measured — and the rest of the drawing follows from it.
Can I convert a PDF?
Yes — inside the app. Upload the PDF in a conversation and choose "Convert to DXF": it extracts the vector geometry directly (walls, annotations, dimensions) on colour-mapped layers. This public tool takes images (PNG/JPG/WEBP/BMP); for a PDF plan, use the app.
What happens to the images I upload?
They are processed to produce your DXF and stored in your own workspace, where you can delete them at any time. See the terms for the full description.
I need a detail drawn from a description, not from an image.
That is the AI DXF generator — you describe the technical requirement in words and get an editable DXF detail back.
Convert your first drawing
Free plan, no credit card. Upload a sketch and see what comes back.