A figure digitizing system is described which reduces the operator's labor and enables even unskilled operators to digitize figures easily and accurately. The operator places a drawing to be read on an image information reader and points to characteristic points of the drawing by means of a cursor equipped with an image reader. A CPU operates in accordance with a program loaded from an external memory unit to determine the coordinates of the characteristic points and to display marks of the characteristic points on a display unit. The operator enters the drawing into the system while viewing the marks of characteristic points displayed on the display unit.

An object of the present invention is to generate a vector or data from inputted drawing data interactively by suppressing the input cost. When an unknown process occurs in the system during data processing, an inquiry to a user is generated in the case of interactive operation. However, when drawings are handled, the number of inquiries to a user increases and the system operability lowers inversely. The present invention executes the drawing recognition method by cooperation and and competition of a multi-agent on the basis of the basic property of a figure such as adjacent relation. When blurring or a problem portion such as in interruption part or a junction part appears during recognition of a drawing, the linkage relation of line paths is automatically decided by making the recognition agent adjacent to the problem portion cooperate and compete. An inquiry to a user is not made. By doing this, vector data is obtained. The input cost of figure information in a data base can be reduced remarkably.