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From a picture to a block you can actually use

Six steps, about a minute of waiting, three files. Here is the whole thing, screen by screen.

A picture of a skateboarder rolling along a seafront path.
Your picture
The same skateboarder redrawn as clean black line art on white.
Your block

The six steps

  1. Upload a picture

    Drag it in or pick it from your computer. JPG, PNG and WebP, up to 10 MB, and up to five at a time.

    The pic2CAD upload screen, with the drop area in the middle and example pictures in the corners.
  2. Choose the block type

    Three cards, and this is the choice that decides everything else.

    Picture accurate

    The whole picture turned into line art as it is: background, pose and framing included. Nothing removed or corrected.

    Subject only

    Cuts out what matters and draws it clean, without background: same pose, same angle. The fastest option for your drawings.

    Orthographic viewbeta

    Redrawn as a clean CAD entourage figure, seen from the front, side, back or top, and scaled to a real height.

  3. Mark the subject

    It finds the subject on its own and boxes it. Drag the corners to tighten it, or click another box. Picture accurate skips this step.

    A picture of a skateboarder with a blue box marking the person, and the settings panel on the right.
  4. Set it up

    The view, the real height in millimetres, and how much detail you want inside the outline. Then confirm the picture is yours to use.

    The settings panel: block name, pictures in the batch, the Max quality and Lines only switches, and the Generate button.
  5. Press Generate

    One credit, about a minute. If it cannot be drawn, the credit goes back on its own.

    The generating screen, with the picture pixelated and a four stage progress bar underneath.
  6. Download the files

    PNG, SVG and DXF, or the three together in a ZIP. Downloading is free, on every plan, as many times as you like.

    The download column, with one button per format and a free retry underneath.

What your drawing comes with

The list a tracer cannot match. Open the file and check every line of it.

  • Clean lines, and only lines

    Not one stray curve around a shadow, a fold or a reflection.

  • A closed outline

    The figure is shut all the way round, so it hatches and fills first time.

  • A block on white

    No background, no grey box behind it. The PNG comes out transparent.

  • Layers you can work with

    Outer, Inner and Fill kept apart, not one single blob on layer 0.

  • Splines, not sawteeth

    A curve is a curve, not a chain of two hundred tiny straight segments.

  • The size you asked for

    Type 1700 mm and the DXF measures 1700 mm. Nothing to scale by eye.

  • Four views that match

    Front, side, back and top drawn in one pass, so they are the same figure. One credit.

  • It opens where you work

    The DXF in AutoCAD, Revit, Rhino, ArchiCAD and LightBurn. The SVG in Glowforge and anything else.

  • Three formats, always

    PNG, SVG and DXF on every plan, and 3 drawings a month on the free one.

A finished pic2CAD block: closed outline, clean lines and a white background.

Which pictures work best

The tool is forgiving, but the picture you feed it still decides how good the line comes out.

Works well

  • The whole subject inside the frame, feet and all
  • Even light, with no hard shadow cutting across it
  • Straight from the front if you are after an Orthographic view
  • The largest version of the picture you have

Gives trouble

  • A subject cut off by the edge of the picture
  • Heavy motion blur, or a very small picture blown up
  • Two people overlapping when you only want one of them
  • A screenshot of a picture instead of the picture itself

Now do it with your own picture

The first one is free, and downloading the three files is free forever.

Create a drawing