Legacy 2D to parametric conversion Converting is not tracing.

This is the misunderstanding that makes shops quote conversion badly, and it is worth clearing first.

Tracing reproduces one cabinet. Conversion works out the rules that were always implicit in how your shop builds that cabinet, and writes them down in a form the software can execute.

Those rules exist. They are just held in the practice of the people who draw, rather than on the sheet. A drawing shows one instance; it does not tell you why the width was chosen, what would change if the opening were different, or which dimensions are genuinely fixed.

• Reading the intent. Establishing what varies, what is fixed, and why, from a drawing that records only the result.
• Establishing variables and constraints. Which dimensions move and within what limits. Where a rule genuinely applies and where the exception is real rather than accidental.
• Encoding construction logic. Joinery method, material assignment, edge treatment, hardware placement and machining, expressed as rules rather than as drawn geometry.
• Testing across the range. A definition that works at nominal size and fails at the extremes is worse than no definition, because people will trust it.
• Documenting for maintenance. Written so your team can extend and amend it later. A library only the supplier can maintain is a dependency nobody should accept.

• High repetition. Items built many times return the most. A one-off from a decade ago is cheaper drawn than parameterised.
• Consistent construction. Where the same item type is built the same way each time, the rules come out clean.
• Documented practice. Shops with existing standards convert faster, because half the work is already done.
• A current library. Drawings representing what you still build, not a historical archive.

Where those conditions are absent, an audit will say so rather than a project discovering it in month three.

Encoding the rules exposes places where your shop has been building the same thing two different ways.

That is useful information and it is uncomfortable. It comes back to you as a decision rather than being resolved quietly in whichever direction is easier to encode, because picking one silently means the library now enforces a choice nobody made.

Not everything should be converted. Genuinely one-off items are cheaper drawn, and value concentrates in what repeats. Usually far less of a library needs converting than shops expect.

Conversion is platform-specific, and the work happens inside the environment you already run rather than in a parallel system that then has to be migrated.

Where you hold the licence and the conventions, we work to them. Platform-specific scope is confirmed at scoping rather than assumed, because what is possible differs materially between environments.

Shops with a large repeating item mix and a platform they are not getting value from. Technical leads who have inherited an undocumented library. Operations preparing for a platform migration who would rather convert deliberately than redraw under pressure.

Related: optimised cut lists, DXF generation, production readiness audit. Platforms: platforms hub.

Scope a conversion →