A Certain Kind of Software ?

[SPEEDRE]

I couldn't think of a better forum to ask this in. Here goes, I've heard of a certain software that can use a photograph to generate scale dimensions. To clarify, take a picture of an excavator say, and this software can generate the orthographic dimensions of it, or, any viewed part such as just, the arm of it. Has anyone ever seen it and does it exist? I hear that some scale modelers use it.

[RomanLini]

Sorry I don't know of specific software to do this, but you can do a crude form of this in any 2D vector graphics program like Corel draw.

Just load the photo in as "import image" then manually draw vector lines over the top, then get the lengths and angles from the vector lines you drew. For something simple like an excavator arm it would only take minutes to do.

[LeeWay]

I actually do this in Turbocad by hand.
Once you have some known dimensions, you can get very close this way. I get close enough for my type work.
For my stuff, I ask guys to use a ruler with the pictures.
Once you have that, you can scale the grid size to fit the ruler and then you just go from there creating parts.