Call 01493 440444 for a free quotation.
Scanning / Digitisation services
Are you looking for a company to digitise / scan all your documents or books? Then look no further because C A Design Services has a friendly and experienced team of scanning technicians here to help you with your scanning project.
The scanning department is equipped with the latest technology and resources to complete your project efficiently and with excellent quality.
Document scanning is the only real solution to fire and flood risks (imagine if all your precious files went up in flames - would they be backed up?) and to clearing out expensive archive and storage space. Of course, document scanning is also great for making your work place more efficient (no more searching for that elusive file).
Please click on a link to read more about the type of scanning we can carry out for you:
- Document scanning (A4 or smaller)
- Large format scanning (A3 to A0) – drawings, maps, plans
- Book scanning
- Microfilm scanning (including aperture card scanning)
And associated services:
- Optical character recognition (OCR)
- Indexing / Cataloguing
- Digitisation of drawings
- Electronic Databases
- Web-hosting
Scanning projects we have undertaken include CDM files, Health & Safety files, burial registers, 18th century books, historical files, planning applications, aperture cards and microfilm.
Accounts records, claim forms, patient records, employee records, project files – you name it, we can scan it. From a filing cabinet to a huge archive room, we can accommodate your document scanning needs.
If your files are made up of a mixture of paper sizes and the documents vary in condition, we can come to your premises and assess your scanning requirements. Usually this can be done by looking at a few typical files with you, to gauge any preparation or repairs that may need to be carried out in advance of the scanning project (we can do this for you!).
Scanned documents can be saved to your preferred format (most clients select PDF, Jpeg or TIFF files), and then burnt to disc or uploaded into an electronic database.
The quality of our document scanning is excellent, and we would be happy to carry out a small sample for you free of charge upon request to demonstrate this. We also have some samples of our work available to see subject to material required (some of our document scanning is of a sensitive nature).
Sensitive / confidential data
We are an approved MOD contractor and therefore can undertake sensitive scanning projects under strict access conditions.
Please call us for a quotation and free sample on 01493 440444.
A Testimonial from Almary Green
"I would like to take this opportunity to extend our thanks to the C A Design team for their help and support as we undertook the daunting project of moving to a paperless office.
The project involved back-scanning all of our client files and resulted in us sending you a total of over 300,000 pages, which were previously stored in 24 filing cabinets. We have been delighted at the standard of the document images produced in the scanning process. We have found your service to be efficient and timely, and your staff friendly and helpful.
The bright airy spaces of our new offices are not cluttered by filing cabinets and this has allowed us to adopt a modern open-plan layout. We believe that the new environment has had a positive affect on both productivity and staff morale, and some degree of this can be attributed to the work done by you."
Office Manager, Almary Green
Large format refers to any documents you have that are over A4 size – in our experience these are usually legacy plans, maps and drawings, on a variety of materials. All of these can be scanned and you can choose from mono or colour scanning.
Once scanned the files can be digitised (vectorised) into AutoCAD or MicroStation to create a working CAD file (see our CAD Services page), and georeferenced for GIS purposes.
For example, we carried out a large project for Greene King which involved scanning their existing plans and then partly digitising them into AutoCAD files. These files were then passed to our CAD draughting team to create Licensed Drinking Area plans for the new Licensing Act.
Please call us for a quotation and free sample on 01493 440444.
Book scanning is a growing trend in the UK, especially in an age where sharing information and making it more accessible to people is important. Our book scanner can create crisp sharp images of the pages, which can then be made into a searchable format using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and/or indexing.
Here are some examples of some of the types of books/publications we can scan/digitise:
- Trade journals
- Burial registers
- Council building control & planning registers
- Theses
- General books (hardback or paperback)
We can scan any kind of publication as long as you either own the copyright or have permission from the owner.
Our book scanner creates scans without the need to unbind or otherwise dismantle the books, so it is the perfect solution for digitising precious and/or valuable books.
Burial registers
We have scanned burial registers for both Manchester City Council and Shrewsbury & Atcham Borough Council, along with Bramcote Crematorium and Gamblingay District Council.
We also indexed Manchester’s burial registers so that the documents could be searched for names, burial dates and parish entries. The burial registers were digitised as part of a drive to create an ancestry portal online. This allows the general public to purchase credits to search for their ancestors in order to build their family trees – in turn creating a revenue stream for the council! This digitisation project was funded by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and we are proud to have helped Manchester achieve their objectives.
Trade Journals
C A Design Services carried out a large book scanning project on behalf of the University of Leicester to digitise their historical trade journals, which were then published on their website.
Please call us for further information on 01493 440444.
Microfilm Scanning (including aperture card scanning)
Many large organisations still hold an archive collection of microfilm, either in the form of microfilm rolls or microfilm jackets, or aperture cards. In the main, we have found that microfilming was often carried out in the past by organisations like insurance companies, solicitors (usually rolls and jackets in both of these cases), councils, engineering companies and large manufacturers (usually via aperture cards) who wanted to have their drawings or documents stored in a more convenient and accessible way.
Unfortunately this has now become a problem for most of these companies.
If you have a collection of aperture cards or microfilm rolls, you are probably looking on here for a key reason: your viewing machine has broken and you can’t get it fixed. This is because as you are probably aware by now, the parts have become obsolete and any maintenance is no longer obtainable.
The solution is to have all your microfilm scanned – and we help you!
Unlike other providers of aperture card scanning, we are lucky to have a greyscale scanning head on our machine which gives an excellent photo quality scan. An additional feature of our aperture card scanner is that a 100% image quality check is carried out at the scanning stage, and any unnecessary background can be removed. This guarantees that all detail is captured at a manageable file size.
For a free quotation, why not give us a call and let us help you get your archives onto CD so you can share your information more freely – not via a very cumbersome machine! We can set the files up for you in a database so you can search for the files easily, and this can even be put securely online.
Call us now on 01493 440444 for a no obligation chat.
Associated services:
Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
Put simply, OCR is the processing of a printed typed document into an electronic one which can be fed into Word and edited, and also made searchable via PDF. This means you can look for all pages which contain a particular word or phrase.
This can be done in solitary or in conjunction with OCR. If your documents have a common set of criteria by which you use to view them, then indexing is the solution for you.
For example, if you have many drawings we can scan these and then index information such as date, contractor name, drawing number, revision number, drawing name and project name. These are fed into a database, which can be searched to find the correct drawing.
Or a solicitor with many case files could have these all scanned then indexed according to client name, topic (e.g personal injury), date and outcome (e.g compensatory amount won). The solicitor can then search for a particular case file, and then open and using OCR drill down for a particular word/phrase.
There are 2 routes to digitisation:
(i) Part rasterising
(ii) Full digitisation
(i) If you have a hard copy drawing which needs a small revision on it, but thereafter is unlikely to need changing or editing, then this is the solution for you. After scanning the image we use Raster Design software to edit part of the drawing and the file is then saved into a two-part file – part TIFF and part Raster file. This does not make a working drawing, but does give you an electronic file and an updated drawing.
(ii) If your drawings will require further updates, then it may be wise to have the drawing fully digitised, and this means we scan the drawing and then bring into AutoCAD and trace over the file (creating layers if necessary) so that you have a fully working AutoCAD file.
Electronic database management solutions (EDMS)
We offer free complimentary viewing software as part of our scanning offer. However, for a more in depth system which integrates with your current software, we have an in-house technical department with software developers who can work with you to create an electronic data management solution to suit your needs.
We can host your scanned files and database securely online. You will be given secure logins and, as your data can be accessed via Internet Explorer, you can permit your colleagues, clients and contractors to view the information too! It is an excellent portal to share your data, particularly if the people who require access are dispersed – for example in various offices or departments.
How to get in touch:
Please call us for further information on any of our scanning services on 01493 440444 or use this link to Request a Quotation.