creating a model from a drawing

Is there a way of creating 3d model parts from drawings?

I have templates for some wood peices to be cut in pdf. All i need is
the 2d profile of the peices and then i want to extrude those 2d
shapes in a 3rd dimension to give them thickness.

The woodworking plans are in pdf format

Thanks for any help offered.

Adam

 

If you have Adobe Illustrator, you can open the pdf's as vector art
then save as DXF's or even as illustrator files and SWx can open them.
If not, jack your screen resolution up as high as it will go, open the
pdf, zoom to what you want, then take a screen shot and paste it into
Paint (Start>All Programs>Accesories>Paint). Save it as your facorite
format, then take Art's suggestion of using the resulting picture as a
"sketch picture" to trace on top of.

If you are lazy and (maybe) want to spend a lot of time cleaning up
data, try Wintopo ( See recent thread) I admit the following is not
fair or current - I haven't used Wintopo for the better part of this
decade. Back in 2001, it provided a DXF file, but it sucked - all
sorts of gaps, and lots of repair was required. Since then I always
traced because then I have control. On the crest of turning to 2008
maybe Wintopo is still free (don't know because I don't care to use it
again seeing that I have Illustrator) and maybe it is excellent (don't
know because I haven't tried it in 6 years) I don't even know if it
works with pdfs now - it was always bitmpas in the past (you know the
difference between vector and bitmap art, right? If not, respond, and
we will let you know about it - it's sort of confusing but everyone
needs to know that it matters) So maybe it will work with you. If
not, the first paragraph will definately work.
ED