Meucow

REDUCE nodes in a distressed font (SCAL 4 (not pro) - help please....

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Dakotagrapx - reading earlier post. Yes, I understand about the nodes for the 'outline' and the concept but I'm trying to remove the inside pieces. I would THINK (maybe I'm wrong) that by SCAL 4 cutting ONLY the outline and not all the misc. shapes (INSIDE) it would reduce cutting...who knows...

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Have you even tried it in Inkscape as it was mentioned many posts ago?   You can save it as an .eps also in inkscape. 

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Dakotagraphx - thank you. I love SCAL and have been using it for 7 years now - it serves me great and I'm slammed with orders... but I have a customer right now who is needing this distressed font and I'm just trying to find the best way to reduce cutting for this font/file...thank you :)

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MZ Skeeter - I have Inkscape and brought file in - but not exactly sure how it can help me. I KNOW it can - just wasn't clear. I selected all text and did Path > Object to Path. But I'm not sure what that is supposed to do - If I can figure out how to get inkscape to convert this to outline ONLY, export and bring bring into SCAL 4  that might be awesome and a great fix...

Thank you

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In Inkscape, if your text is still text, select it and choose Path->Object to Path. The text will now be a group of objects. Ungroup the newly converted text

Select your text then choose Path->Break Apart

Now choose Path->Union

This will remove all the white spaces inside the letters. Unfortunately, this will also remove the inside of letters like A, O, R, P so if you have those letters you'll need to edit those manually and delete individual nodes.

 

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If this is something you plan to do often in the future, it might be worth it to download a font editing program and create a new version of the font with the interior distresses removed so that in the future you can simply type out what you want and it'll look the way you want without any further editing.

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darcshadow - really this is a one time deal. I just know there's a better way to do it than with SCAL.   I did what you said - I must be missing something. I'm ONLY trying to get the outline - not the inside (shapes) that are in this distressed font.. I tried your instructions but the inside pieces are still there. Not sure if I'm doing it wrong. So frustrated - this should be so simple....

 

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After you do the break apart, keep the text selected and then do the union.

Below is what it should look like after the break apart. You can see the distressed stuff inside the font is selected along with the rest of the font, with all this selected if you do the union the internal distressed stuff will disappear.

image.thumb.png.06f8bb4bc4ee9396b4f725544edb494f.png

After Union

image.thumb.png.ffdd9b878eb513e7153a4f0dab391447.png

 

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I think people get node count confused as well. You could place 5000 nodes on a straight line and it would not cause any undue wear and tear on a cutter. As stated by several, you are going to have a high amount of cut time and all that on any kind of distressed project. 

There isn't going to be ab "EASY" button to just magically make dirty fonts cleaner as far as removing the inner grunge effects. You are going to have to figure out your SCAL4 or take a moment to learn Inkscape. In your predicament I would do just like mentioned and go ahead and cut it and then just not weed the little interior parts. I had remove them most of the time. If there are a lot of words then I do each letter and then copy paste it in the next ones so I don't have to clean each one up. There are no more than 26 letters unless its mandarin Chinese. 

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Hi- thank you all - I make signs. So, ensuring I get the most 'clean' and reduced node version of this file, I will be cutting again and and and again. I want to eliminate weeding - I don't do any 'weeding' because I just create the stencil and paint the sign from there. I don't want the interior parts at all - need to remove them so they are not even part of the stencil....I do understand about nodes and I know this font is distressed... ugh....thank you all. 

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1 hour ago, Meucow said:

Export as: SVG, Bitmap, JPEG, PNG, TIFF 

 

in flexi I uncompunded the image after I had converted it to outlines - then deleted each of the inner bits

 

testtemp.eps

Untitled.jpg

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if someone with scalp wants to play with it the font is astounding-news on dafont

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I have and used SCALP 4 all the time for design, but the easiest way I have found to do this is:

Type the text

Right click on the text, Select "Break Apart"

If you have a letter that has a center to it like A, O, B etc. Left click the center of the letter then hold "shift" click the rest of the letter then use the back minus front option on the "path" drop down menu on the top. Or go under the "effects" tab and select "knockout" then pull the knock out section and delete it.

Select all the text after you have all the "knockouts" done and hold "Alt" then "U" (or from the path menu select Union) which unions all the interior parts to the rest of the letter. Then right click and select "Group" 

Now your text should cut like you are needing.

Hope this helps 

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88X - I'm going to message you privately...I'm not fully clear on what to do.... (thank you, though, for your help - looking forward to finding a solution....

 

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Click the node selection button ( I think the third one down). Draw a selection box around stray nodes and hit your delete button.

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