We use cookies to personalize content, interact with our analytics companies, advertising networks and cooperatives, and demographic companies, provide social media features, and to analyze our traffic. Our social media, advertising and analytics partners may combine it with other information that you’ve provided to them or that they’ve collected from your use of their services. Learn more.
i am working on some plans i purchased to make them with the cnc instead of by hand. been working on them on and off for the past month or so.
when i try to image trace it doesnt pick up any lines. i am at a loss to make the lines a little darker/bolder so i can get them to pick up with the trace tool.
i am a old school paint user. i am trying to figure out inkscape but i cant select the parts and make the lines uniform thickness.
any suggestions on a easy to learn software to make svg files? i have Adobe Illustrator inkscape
the original file is pdf but the image below is my modified version. could post pages of the original if needed. but they are in color and made cleanup hard(for me anyway).
So far I have redrawn everything but the lines aren’t 100% right. Wonder if there is any place in the site person wise that does this for fun/Little pocket cash… this weekend I am having my rubber band battle again. Did a little one in January due to not getting a lot of them done (why I bought the cnc) I get materials covered but make 0 profit. I have 9 more to make this week. Would be nice to hit carve and only have to assemble. Scroll saw 3/4 sucks. Bandsaw to big for the wheel and trigger.
One trick it to turn off the outline (set the stroke paint to none) and make the fill a solid color. I fint this gives me a better visualization of actual part size. Though I tend to work with just outlines until I get everything lined up.
if you post your original PDF and I will see if I can’t run a cleaner trace.
You can use the trace bitmap function in Inkscape. It gets you the broad strokes which you can then clean up more easily. For instance, here is your png converted to an svg. You’ll need to clean up the drill drawings though, they rarely turn out to be perfect circles.
If the plans are purchased, then I would assume the original drawings are higher quality and can be used to generate more accurate vector drawings.
the plans were pdf image i posted was a grey scale with words removed for what i needed. trying to simplify the plans as much as posible to get it to work. in the pdf they were cut into pieces and each piece was cut into 3 sections. i sent aaron the original file and he spent some time on it but looks like a clean enough svg for me to modify a little bit to make it perfect for what i need.
I run my PDF thru Photoshop to convert it to a manageable BMP for tracing but it is not as easy for those that can not afford the Photoshop option it definitely is not cheap. I am not sure if there are other programs that can convert a pdf. Running it thru VCarve makes a sad representation of a bmp trace as well. If you have actual dimensional plans you can reference off I would just redraw all the pieces. Converting scroll plans to work with cnc is not as easy as you would think the trace bitmap feature in Inkscape is nice but any flaw in a hand drawn plan and you get noise the computer can not convert cleanly.
They all cut. little issues still have to adjust a few more things but test run went WELL!!! thanks again. when all is fixed i will be posting in the toys projects area!
An alternative to Photoshop is Gimp. It has many of the same features and is completely free.
You can also use Inkscape to open PDFs and convert them to SVGs. I was able to do that recently with a paper craft mask PDF template. Instead of doing all the intricate cuts with an x-acto knife, I simply laid the paper on my X-carve and had the laser cut out the printed templates with fold lines intact.
I had gimp when I was doing pepakura paper cutouts for my Halloween costumes (full suits of every Ironman, 3 versions of master chief and Lori thor…) never could get gimp to work back then.
Few years back I tryed gimp and cloud never figure it out. Couldn’t get anything besides converting files to work in gimp. Couldn’t get layers or anything to work. Can do a lot in paint. The miss’s is trained from her last job for some photo pro for making cards and stuff. She covers the parts I can’t do but the files here were above our skill level. I just have to adjust screw holes a little more and all will be good besides modifying 1 piece to make a better grip from the barrel. Little things I should be able to do. Gotta make a house sign tonight then I can mess with this pattern some more.
In this case it was actually the source file. It was formatted as a series of separate bitmap strips and colored in such a way to really screw with the auto trace functions.
Resaving each PDF page as a single JPG fixed most of this.
