PhotoCAD Guides
A logo to emboss, a component outline from a photo, a scanned profile. Get it into a sketch as real geometry, closed and to size, and extrude it.
A logo or a name to emboss, engrave, or cut into a part, from a PNG or a JPG.
Real conversions from PhotoCAD. Drag the slider to compare the image with the vector.
Insert the image as a Sketch Picture, scale it, and draw the profile over it by hand. The picture never becomes geometry.
Traces a Sketch Picture into sketch entities. Fine on a crisp image; a photo or a soft logo gives fragments and gaps.
Someone draws it for you and sends a DXF or a part file. Fine for one; slow for a stream of customer artwork.
PhotoCADDrop in the PNG, JPG, HEIC, or a PDF page. For a photographed part, shoot square-on in even light; for a logo, use the largest version you have.
SolidWorks builds from sketches, and a sketch is geometry: lines, arcs, and splines that close into profiles. An image is none of those. Insert a picture and SolidWorks shows it, faithfully, as a Sketch Picture behind your cursor, and then waits for you to draw. That is by design, and it is why the forum threads about getting a logo onto a part all end in an afternoon of tracing.
The Autotrace add-in, in the higher editions, will trace a Sketch Picture into entities, and on a crisp black-and-white image it is a start. On a photograph, a soft logo, or a scanned drawing it returns fragments and gaps, and SolidWorks will not extrude a profile with a gap in it.
The route that works is a DXF. PhotoCAD reads the image as a shape and draws it as closed profiles with smooth curves, at a real size you set from one dimension. SolidWorks imports that DXF straight into a sketch, on the plane you choose, and the profile extrudes first time. Six steps, above, and the third one is the one people miss: set the size before you download, and there is nothing to scale afterwards.
A sketch that arrives at the right size needs no scaling and no reference dimension in SolidWorks. Set it from one known distance in PhotoCAD.
Upload the image and get a closed profile at your size, ready for a SolidWorks sketch.
Your first 3 conversions are free — no card required.
A gasket, a bracket, a plate laid on the bench, photographed square-on.
A cross-section from an old drawing, a cardboard template, a stencil.
A screenshot or a scan of a 2D drawing you need as a sketch to build from.
A DXF of closed shapes and smooth curves at real size, ready to import into a sketch and extrude.
PhotoCAD reads what the image shows and draws it as paths: straight edges, smooth curves, closed shapes. Not a trace of the pixels, so no staircase edges and no open gaps for SolidWorks to complain about.
Click two points with a known distance between them and type it, in millimeters or inches. The sketch will arrive at that size, so there is nothing to scale in SolidWorks.
DXF is the format SolidWorks imports into a sketch. It comes with DWG, SVG, and PDF from the same conversion.
Open the DXF in SolidWorks and choose “Import to a new part as 2D sketch” in the DXF/DWG Import wizard, with the units set to match. Or, inside an open sketch on the plane you want, use Insert > DXF/DWG.
The profiles are closed, so Extruded Boss or Cut works straight away. Add fillets, holes, and features as on any sketch.
3 free conversions. No card required.
The DXF is in millimeters. Choose millimeters in the import wizard, or the profile arrives 25.4 times too small.
SolidWorks can also open a DXF as a 2D drawing document. For a part, you want the sketch option, on the plane you will extrude from.
PhotoCAD's shapes are closed, but a shape that touches itself or another can confuse a profile. If Extrude asks you to pick contours, that is why.
