Scientists and engineers often work a lot with pictorial data — plots, nomogramms. They are friendly and presentable but for calculations one need to extract numerical values from the plots. Naturally, in the most cases these pictures are plotted based on numerical source data, but they might be inaccessible to user. There are special devices — digitizer pads, which are used for paper-printed plots digitizing. But if the image is loaded into the computer and is visualized on the screen, it is more convinient to use special tool — Digitizer.

The program is easy to use: one mouse click to fix the origin of the coordinates grid, two more clicks, entering two numbers and scale is specified. Now, user can click on the plot and the program will mark the points recalculating the coordinates. Once it is enough points marked it is possible to display a curve using linear or spline interpolation. And then check whether it fits the original plot well. The program allows moving, inserting, deleting and editing points while plot is digitized to the required precision. It supports many curves at a time, saving unfinished work to the session file allowing to continue at a later time. Finally, the digitized data can be exported into other applications.

Originally Digitizer program was written in C++ and was designed as a software component for Material Properties Databases. However, it appeared to be useful as a standalone Windows application. Nowadays (summer 2004) we are developing special new implementation using C# for .NET platform, where we introduce innovative UI and will provide both executable version and .NET component control, which can be embedded into any .NET application. The slightly narrowed personal use release will also be available for free. Check the Visual C# .NET Developer Toolbox page.