The use of high-level knowledge for enhanced entry of engineering drawings

A scanner-based system is described that partially automates the conversion of telephone outside plant (OP) drawings, thereby significantly reducing costs. The objective of the conversion is to capture the information appearing on the OP drawings in a form suitable for subsequent manipulation using mechanized facilities management tools. The system consists of a fully automatic process followed by an operator-driven, semiautomatic process. The key to the success of the approach lies in exploiting high-level domain-specific knowledge, namely, OP engineering rules, in both the automatic and operator-driven parts. A graph structure, used as a blackboard throughout the processing, supports a systematic use of high-level rules. Experiments show a threefold productivity gain relative to manual digitization methods