PURPOSE: To extract accurately each character from a drawing where characters and patterns are drawn closely, by providing a character flag grouping means, a connection extracting means, a graphic pattern eliminating means and a picture data cutout means.
CONSTITUTION: A picture data of a noted character string is extracted from a picture memory 21 by applying processing over procedures of a picture data cutout unit 22, connection type extracting unit 27, graphic pattern eliminating unit 28, flag 29 and a character string picture memory 30 to all lattice points where a character string flag MF is at "1". A character flag grouping unit 26 brings the level of the character string flag MF and a character flag FF of a lattice point lavel code brinding the flag MF to "1" at first, into "0". All character strings written on an input drawing are extracted by applying the said processing until all the character flags FF of the lattice label code stored in a lattice point label code memory 24 go to "0".
HATSUZAKI JIYUNJI
INOUE AKIRA
