Raj smiled and saved the email in a folder called MAP TO CAD . Not perfect. But true enough to matter.
Now came the ugly part.
Raj didn’t answer. He just stared at the file. It felt like cheating. It felt like archaeology. Two months later, a different email arrived. A grad student at the local university. “We’re doing a historical preservation study of the Henderson Mill site. The county says no as-builts exist. But we heard someone might have made a CAD file?” google map to autocad
Raj hesitated. Then he sent it. No charge.
His phone buzzed. A client. Urgent. “Need as-built drawings of the old Henderson Mill site. Survey was done in 1987. Good luck.” Raj smiled and saved the email in a folder called MAP TO CAD
At 2 a.m., he had a DWG file. Layers: FOUNDATION_EXIST, RAIL_SPUR, DRAINAGE_LEGACY. He added a note block: “Derived from Google Maps satellite imagery dated Dec 2023. Not a certified survey. For conceptual use only.”
An idea prickled.
He drew a line exactly 50 feet long on top of the map’s scale bar. Then he used ALIGN to stretch the whole image until his line matched a real 50-foot CAD line. It wasn't survey-grade. It wasn't even legal. But it was something .