CIT to TXT Converter

CIT to TXT Conversion Explained

Converting an Intergraph CAD image (.CIT) to a plain text file (.TXT) is a data extraction process. Because .CIT is a raster image format used for scanned engineering drawings and maps, it does not contain native text characters. To convert .CIT to .TXT, software must use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to identify letters and numbers within the image pixels.

People perform this conversion to extract written data from legacy CAD scans. You gain fully searchable, editable text and a massive reduction in file size. However, you lose all graphical data. Every line, curve, map boundary, and architectural diagram is permanently destroyed in the output file. If you need to edit the actual drawing, converting to .TXT is a bad idea; you should use raster-to-vector software to convert to .DXF or .DWG instead.

Typical Tasks and Users

This conversion is highly specific and serves a narrow set of workflows:

• Archivists and Data Entry Clerks: Extracting metadata from scanned drawing title blocks, such as author names, dates, and project numbers, to populate modern databases.
• Mechanical Engineers: Pulling Bill of Materials (BOM) or parts lists from legacy schematics without typing them manually.
• GIS Technicians: Extracting coordinate labels, street names, or elevation numbers from old Intergraph raster maps.
• Document Management Systems: Generating raw text payloads to make legacy CAD image archives searchable via keyword indexing.

Software & Tool Support

Handling .CIT files requires specialized software, while .TXT is universally supported.

• CAD and GIS Software: Bentley MicroStation natively supports .CIT files, as Bentley acquired Intergraph's format legacy. Safe Software FME can also read and process these raster files.
• Image Viewers: IrfanView can open .CIT files if the correct format plugins are installed.
• OCR Engines: Command-line tools like Tesseract OCR or commercial software like ABBYY FineReader handle the text extraction, but they usually require the .CIT file to be converted to .TIFF or .PNG first.
• Text Editors: Any editor, from Windows Notepad to VS Code, can open the resulting .TXT file.

Pros and Cons of the Conversion

Pros:

• Searchability: Transforms locked image pixels into searchable string data.
• Database Import: Plain text is easily parsed into CSV formats, databases, or spreadsheets.
• File Size: A .TXT file containing extracted labels is fractions of a kilobyte, compared to megabytes for a high-resolution raster scan.

Cons:

• Total Geometry Loss: All visual context, spatial relationships, and drafting lines are discarded.
• High Error Rates: OCR on engineering drawings is notoriously difficult. Custom CAD fonts, handwritten notes, and low-resolution scans cause frequent character misidentification.
• Layout Destruction: Plain text does not retain the physical location of the text on the page. A label pointing to a specific machine part loses its context.

Conversion Difficulties & Why Convert.Guru

The technical pipeline to convert .CIT to .TXT is prone to failure. .CIT files are typically 1-bit (monochrome) raster images. In engineering drawings, drafting lines frequently intersect with text characters. Standard OCR engines fail when a line touches a letter, reading a "C" with a line through it as an "E" or garbage characters. Furthermore, legacy CAD systems often used proprietary stencil fonts that modern OCR models struggle to recognize.

Convert.Guru simplifies this complex pipeline. Instead of forcing users to manually convert the .CIT to a standard image format, apply despeckling and line-removal filters, and then run a standalone OCR tool, Convert.Guru handles the entire process. It decodes the obscure Intergraph format natively, applies necessary image pre-processing to isolate text from geometry, and outputs a clean .TXT file in a single step.

CIT vs. TXT: What is the better choice?

Which format should you choose?

Choose .CIT if you need to preserve the visual integrity of an engineering drawing, schematic, or map for viewing in MicroStation or archiving.

Choose .TXT only if your sole goal is to extract written data—like a parts list or title block—for use in a database or search index.

When to avoid: Do not convert to .TXT if you want a searchable document that still looks like the original drawing. For that workflow, convert the .CIT to a searchable .PDF (PDF/A). If you want to edit the lines and shapes in modern CAD software, avoid .TXT and use a raster-to-vector converter to generate a .DXF file.

Conclusion

Converting .CIT to .TXT makes sense only for targeted data extraction workflows where legacy CAD text must be digitized for databases or search engines. The biggest limitation to watch for is the complete destruction of all visual and geometric data, alongside potential OCR errors caused by intersecting drafting lines. Convert.Guru provides a reliable, automated solution for this exact conversion, bridging the gap between obscure Intergraph raster decoding and modern text extraction without requiring complex, multi-step software pipelines.