Any image, picture, or photo of a component, a drawing, or a graphic, converted to clean vector paths at real size. For the laser, the router, the plasma table, or CAD.
✦Drop an image here
JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, AVIF, TIFF, or PDF. Any size.
Open the converter3 free conversions. No card required.
Real conversions from PhotoCAD. Drag the slider to compare the image with the vector.
Download the vector and go. Or set the real size, add dimensions, and lay it out on a titled sheet, all in PhotoCAD's Editor.
Click two points and enter the distance between them. The whole drawing scales to match.
Place the image in Inkscape or Fusion and draw over it. Exact where you were careful, and nothing you did not draw.
An automatic trace of the pixels: jagged corners, hundreds of nodes, open paths the cutter rejects. From a photo, every shadow too.
An image is a grid of pixels, and a machine does not cut pixels. The laser, the router, and the plasma table follow paths, and the software that drives them, LightBurn, SheetCAM, VCarve, Fusion, will not accept a picture. Neither will a CAD program, beyond pinning it to the background as a reference. So the graphic, the scan, or the photo has to become vectors first.
Most images that need a DXF are pictures of something: a component photographed on the bench, a picture of a drawing, a template on the table, the photo a customer sent. A photograph has shadows, texture, a background, and a soft edge around everything, and an automatic trace follows all of it, so a picture of a bracket comes back as a cloud of fragments with the grain of the bench drawn in.
PhotoCAD does not trace pixels. It reads what the image shows and draws it as paths: a straight line where the picture has a straight edge, a smooth curve where it curves, a closed shape where there is a shape, and nothing for the shadow. A photographed sheet is squared up before it is converted. Then you set the real size from one dimension you know and download a DXF that imports at that size, ready to cut.
A cutter needs a closed path to know what is inside. You get closed outlines and smooth curves, not a staircase of tiny segments with a gap somewhere.
A logo, an ornament, or a template as a cut file for the laser: closed outlines the software can fill and offset, at the right size on the bed.
A gasket, a bracket, a blanking plate laid on the bench: photograph it, set one dimension, and cut a replacement.
Drop in an image and get clean, closed vector paths.
Your first 3 conversions are free — no card required.
JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, AVIF, or TIFF. A graphic from a design app, a screenshot, a scan, or a photo taken on the bench. A photographed sheet of paper is squared up before conversion.
PhotoCAD reads what the image shows and draws it as paths: one line where there is one edge, a smooth curve where it curves, a closed shape where there is a shape. Shadows, texture, and pixel noise are left behind.
Set the real size from one dimension you know, then download. DXF for the machine, plus DWG, SVG, and PDF from the same conversion.
Add dimensions, text, and arrows, point to point or locked horizontal and vertical.
Choose a sheet from Letter to ARCH E or A4 to A0, set the scale, and fill in the title block.
The drawing at real size in model space, with the sheet as a layout. DWG, SVG, and PDF included.
Someone redraws it for you. Fine for one file; slow and repetitive for a shop that gets artwork every week.
PhotoCADClosed shapes and smooth curves at real size, with DWG, SVG, and PDF alongside.
Click two points, type the distance, and the whole file scales to match. The component arrives at its true size, not the size of the picture.
Written as AutoCAD R2000, which every CAM package we have tested imports. Older software that wants R12 can have it: switch it on once in your account settings.
DXF for the machine, DWG for the CAD office, SVG for the cutter that prefers it, PDF to check on paper. One credit covers all four.
Silhouettes, monograms, and decorative panels from a graphic or a photo, as the closed paths a plasma table needs.
A symbol, a logo, or a picture of a drawing brought into AutoCAD, Fusion, or SolidWorks as real geometry rather than an image reference.
