darcshadow

I'd just like to see the spacing after Location fixed. ha!

What am I missing, out side of the little dot on the left side of the triangle, that pen drawing looks perfect to me. Or is the dot what you are referring to as bad?

SIgnblazer has an option to minimize vinyl movement, minimize carnage movement, and a 3rd option that I don't recall right now. But I've never noticed it jumping all over the place.

Also to help with closing the shape, you could also draw the box as four individual lines that extend just slightly past the corners. This way the cutter is simply making four straight lines and the final shape is guaranteed to be closed since all the lines will overlap on the corners.

Just curious, is it that the software doesn't run, or that you can't control your cutter? There are actually very few programs that won't run under windows 10, it's the drivers to control the hardware that is usually the problem, in which case doesn't matter what software you have unless you have the drivers, or the software happens to have the drivers built in you'll still be out of luck. Another option, if you cutter uses a serial connection you can control it that way without the need for a driver.

To me personally, $25 per hour is a little low, and $75 per hour is pretty steep. If you're trying to do this for a living I would say around $50-$60 per hour would be a reasonable rate. But there is always the fudge factor. Customers expect a certain price and if it's too low they think the product is cheap, if it's too high, they go some place else. I always look at it as what would I pay for this, and then bump it up a little cause I'm a cheap bastard.

Just pealing it from the backing will stretch it some. I've used this technique for small decals that I'm using as stencils so the un tapped area doesn't matter, but even on small decals the vinyl stretches a little while pealing it off the backing.

There is not a direct way to do this in SB, but it can be done. Create the text and the image. Duplicate the text and combine the text and the image. You'll get what you have above, now draw a box around the new image, make sure the box is below the image and select both and do a punch through. Delete the image used to punch through and you should have the inverse of it inside your box. Now select this image and do a Split Objects then manually delete the portions of the bear that are outside of the letters. Once done, combine the remaining parts back to a single image and move it onto the top of your original text. This can be done much easier in Inkscape, by simply using the Intersection tool. As slide&dice pointed out in the other thread, if it's being done with cut vinyl you can simply weed out what you don't want.

There is not a direct way to do this in SB, but it can be done. Create the text and the image. Duplicate the text and combine the text and the image. You'll get what you have above, now draw a box around the new image, make sure the box is below the image and select both and do a punch through. Delete the image used to punch through and you should have the inverse of it inside your box. Now select this image and do a Split Objects then manually delete the portions of the bear that are outside of the letters. Once done, combine the remaining parts back to a single image and move it onto the top of your original text. This can be done much easier in Inkscape, by simply using the Intersection tool. As slide&dice pointed out though, if it's being done with cut vinyl you can simply weed out what you don't want.

Yeah, that's what the extension in Inkscape does, don't know how machine specific it is though. G-Code is a programing language, not a simple file type. It's the base language that most CNC software programs use to control the CNC. Your buddy with the CNC, I would assume has some software that he uses, I can't image he writes the G-Code every time he wants to make something. Find out what his software is and what file types it supports. Inkscape can export to a wide range of file types, it should be able to export to something that he can open with his software.

This would be a simple enough image to get your feet wet on doing a manual trace as suggested. Another option if you are more comfortable working with raster images, edit the image cleaning it up much as possible and make it a simple black and white image, then import it into VM to be vectored. Will likely still need to do some node editing, but the better the source image, the better the trace will be.

Inkscape has an extension that can do this, although I've not played around with it to know any more than the fact that it exist. I have created shapes in Inkscape and exported them as .dxf files that a buddy of mine then opened in his CNC software and cut the object for me.

Yeah, ideally I'd like to find the base font the font designer used to created the distressed font.

Anyone know of a font similar to VTKS Expert only not distressed.

Downloading fonts is simple. Most web pages you download a zip file. Inside that zip file is the font file, just double click on it and it will install automatically. Then just start what ever program you are using and the new font should now be in your list of fonts.

Something else to try, have you played with Inkscape at all? I keep finding references that GreatCut 3 can cut directly from Inkscape, although I have not been able to find instructions on how to do this.

Have you tried picking random cutters from the signblazer menu? Even if the cutter isn't listed, there is a good chance one of the others in the list will work with your cutter. What version of autocad do you have? A quick google searched showed several results on how to export an EPS from autocad.

Just found a nice way to preview all installed fonts using MS Word. You create a simple macro in word and it will then generate a file with all your fonts. You can edit the macro so that the sample of the font says what ever you like. http://exde601e.blogspot.com/2009/12/view-all-installed-fonts-with-microsoft.html

There are a few font matching free web pages and if you get real serious there is some even better software you can buy. If all else fails you can post an image here asking for help. Someone can usually identify it pretty quickly. http://www.whatfontis.com/ http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/

Here's a start for you. Just did a manual track of the black portion of the hawk using the method I described above. Blackhawks.svg

Fonts never trace well, you're better off finding the font and recreating it. The baseball bat wouldn't be too hard to recreate either. The hawks is the challenge. If you could find a larger image to start with that will help. The hawks are mirror images of each other, so just focus on getting one right then just copy and flip it. The shapes to the hawk are rather simple and you might do well manually tracing. To manually trace, import the raster image and then with the beizler tool do ruff trace by putting nodes at the sharp corners and complete the shape. Then set the transparency of the new object to 50% or so and start adding additional nodes and editing the lines to match up with the raster image. Takes some practice but it's a very handy skill to have.

No, cause the preview is using the actual cut file. I use a temp file frequently and it changes often. If I go back in the history and look at the temp file, the preview is what the file currently looks like, not what it looked like 2 or 3 months ago.

The files contained in the HISTORY folder are nothing more than text files that have the address of the actual file used. So if you were to copy them from one computer to another, it would do you no good unless you also had the original cut files on the new computer and stored in the same location.

He does both, said he didn't like going from Signblazer, design, export, then import into the GCC software and when he does more complicated designs does them in AutoCAD.

Can't AutoCAD export files as eps? Assuming it exports them as a true EPS and not a raster image imbedded in an EPS, most any cutting software should be able to open it and cut it. Just curious, why are you using SignBlazer to design, and a different program to cut? Why not just cut from SignBlazer?