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General discussion

monitor advice

Apr 7, 2004 6:20AM PDT

I work in a county office that, among other documents related to land transfers, receives and records plats for permanent record. Generally speaking, these are surveyors drawings showing the property lines and other requisite information like distance and bearing. In an effort to move away from having to pull the physical plat for viewing I would appreciate any suggestions as to how we could make these images viewable in real size by way of either a flat panel monitor or through the use of a projector. Currently, we do have these documents scanned, though I'm not sure at what resolution, by an outside source. When that process is complete, we load the images on our system, at which time we are able to view them on our computer monitors. We use 18" flat panel monitors with all our computers and depending on the size of the original drawing, we can get a legible screen. The problem is when a large original is scanned, it is displayed in such a compressed manner that often we are unable to read any of the information. We do have the ability to click/drag and enlarge any portion of the image but that produces a degenerated image when compared to the original. Not being overly hip in the tech world, I can ony assume this is caused by the compession. The ultimate goal is to make these images available in a reliable way in 1 to 1 ratio. I realize I may be operating in the 'if they can send a man to the moon' mode but I'm anxious to hear any responses. Thanks for everyones time.

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not a real hi tech suggestion
Apr 7, 2004 3:26PM PDT

your problem to start i think is the resolution of the scan. to fix that, perhaps you should get a really hi megapixel digital camera and take photos of the items with that. when viewed in "actual view" on a monitor you might be able to see the detail. anoher option, if that doesn't capture the detail, you might try taking film photos with tripod and slo film and scanning the negs at the highest res your scanner has. This will make for big files but you might be able to see. -- fj

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Re:monitor advice
Apr 7, 2004 10:34PM PDT

I work with a lot of Architects. Those that need to scan 36x42 drawings use an OCE scanner that connects to their OCE printers and to a computer in the office that has a SCSI controller and runs scanning software. They can scan large drawings and use them with any size monitor, just like the drawings they work with. There is no loss when zooming in, it just works.

Your problem is your scanning not your monitors.