RMweb Gold JCL Posted February 6, 2014 Author RMweb Gold Share Posted February 6, 2014 Measuring a Line in Inkscape Here's a quick tip, say you have a curved line, such as the arc of a roof, and you want to know how long it is so that you can cut an appropriate sized piece of styrene, all you need to do is draw the arc only, select it, choose Extensions -> Visualize Path -> Measure Path. Change the units to something relevant to you, and click on Apply. Inkscape will create a text object containing text showing the length of your arc. This looks like it can be used for any type of line. Other methods of finding the length of a line are also available cheers Jason Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeOxon Posted February 12, 2014 Share Posted February 12, 2014 In post #541 of this thread, I described using a 1/8" diameter diamond dressing tool to etch the surface of plastic and brass sheets with the Silhouette cutter. Subsequently, when trying to mark small circles to represent rivets, I found that the results were rather mis-shapen. Investigation showed that the small diameter tool was only held on two moulding 'pips' at the tip of the pen holder, as shown in the photo below: The result was that the tip could rock slightly from side to side, so distorting curved shapes. I'm sure that this problem could be solved in a number of ways (e.g. adding packing around the tool) but I saw that Amazon also listed a 15/64" (6mm) tool of similar length, so decided to try this as an alternative. I cleaned up the end of the pen holder with a drill to provide a round aperture and inserted the larger tool, which was also held more firmly by the two fixing screws on the sides of the holder. As can be seen in the second photo, below, the diamond tip is now held firmly in both vertical and horizontal directions and engraves circles successfully Mike Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
katwigan Posted February 16, 2014 Share Posted February 16, 2014 Hi guys,has anyone had a unit do this before? I'm in the process of doing the foot bridge for Wigan Wallgate, drew this sidewall (?) section up and decided just to copy / paste / mirror the original drawing as I needed several lengths to be done. The first cutting attempt was going well until I noticed the apparent difference between the L/H and R/H versions.Cutting was on 0.005" styrene 1/33/ "using about 225 deg on a cb09 blade" . As you can see the upper set of bars are only half the width of the lower set, infact they are only 0.2mm. there is also a bit of cutting distortion evident at the joint with the outer edges. The DXF file I used when measured shows both the sets to have the same width bars. I have tried not mirroring the set and they all cut out the same! Any thoughts ? Cheers Kevan 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymw Posted February 16, 2014 Share Posted February 16, 2014 Hi Kevin, I've not got one of these machines, but when you are cutting, can you reverse the direction of cut, so that both cut the same way (probably means you can't mirror). It looks to me that you have backlash in the system. i.e. there is slop - either in bearings/slides or drive belts/screws, or both (is the cutting blade OK - not loose). If you can't physically adjust it out, then maybe you can allow for it in the software (probably unlikely) Best wishes, Ray Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeTrice Posted February 16, 2014 Share Posted February 16, 2014 Measuring a Line in Inkscape Here's a quick tip, say you have a curved line, such as the arc of a roof, and you want to know how long it is so that you can cut an appropriate sized piece of styrene, all you need to do is draw the arc only, select it, choose Extensions -> Visualize Path -> Measure Path. Change the units to something relevant to you, and click on Apply. Inkscape will create a text object containing text showing the length of your arc. This looks like it can be used for any type of line. Other methods of finding the length of a line are also available cheers Jason It would be nice if it all worked as expected. Unfortunately I have found some interesting 'features'. Here I have drawn a line. The measurement system at the top states it is 24mm high. The measure extension on the other hand gives a different dimension: Zooming in on the end of the line shows that the handles are outside of the node points of the line. Selecting each node individually and noting its y value suggests that the line is nearer the measured length between nodes: My suspicion is that the length on the toolbar is based over handles. There is a setting in the Stroke settings to allow the line to be extended to match the handles and it does now print, as far as I can tell, to 24mm length, so use the measure extension with care!!!!! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
HAB Posted February 16, 2014 Share Posted February 16, 2014 Looks like a case of spurious precision! Is this the software they used to design the Hubble telescope? Keep up the good stuff Mike / all. Cheers, Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rods_of_Revolution Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 The software that comes with the silhouette cutters is a vector drawing package for arts and crafts, it's not really intended for model engineering. If you want a decent CAD package that costs nothing, is professional standard and exports straight to .dxf, then try DraftSight: http://www.3ds.com/products-services/draftsight/overview/ Using engineering software for engineering applications avoids the issues outlined above! Cheers, Jack Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
richbrummitt Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 (edited) Hi guys,has anyone had a unit do this before? I'm in the process of doing the foot bridge for Wigan Wallgate, drew this sidewall (?) section up and decided just to copy / paste / mirror the original drawing as I needed several lengths to be done. The first cutting attempt was going well until I noticed the apparent difference between the L/H and R/H versions. Cutting was on 0.005" styrene 1/33/ "using about 225 deg on a cb09 blade" . As you can see the upper set of bars are only half the width of the lower set, infact they are only 0.2mm. there is also a bit of cutting distortion evident at the joint with the outer edges. The DXF file I used when measured shows both the sets to have the same width bars. I have tried not mirroring the set and they all cut out the same! Any thoughts ? Cheers Kevan I'm not sure why or where the problem is for the general case. The solution for you (based on the image) is to cut them both the same and then turn one part over. You don't need a LH and RH version. Edited February 17, 2014 by richbrummitt Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold JCL Posted February 17, 2014 Author RMweb Gold Share Posted February 17, 2014 Hi Kevan If you created a DXF file, what software did you use? Also,are you able to upload the file here so we can have a quick look at it? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
katwigan Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 Yes rich, it suddenly dawned on me that I needn't have mirrored the design so I went back and reproduced it with them all the one hand, and other than it being a bit of a task to get them off an overly sticky cutting mat all was ok. Jason the DXF file was created on a program called EMS , a free piece of software that while limited in some respects is very easy to use, has some good features whilst not having shown up any limitations to what I need. iron bridge part b.DXF Oh, just tried to upload the studio file also, it says I'm not allowed to ??? I am not sure if the problem is software or hardware generated, when I redid the file to 'all one hand' everything cut fine, straight lines, no excess rad's in the corners. It's all a bit odd really. Anyway bridge building continues. Kevan 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rods_of_Revolution Posted February 17, 2014 Share Posted February 17, 2014 Yes rich, it suddenly dawned on me that I needn't have mirrored the design so I went back and reproduced it with them all the one hand, and other than it being a bit of a task to get them off an overly sticky cutting mat all was ok. Jason the DXF file was created on a program called EMS , a free piece of software that while limited in some respects is very easy to use, has some good features whilst not having shown up any limitations to what I need. iron bridge part b.DXF Oh, just tried to upload the studio file also, it says I'm not allowed to ??? I am not sure if the problem is software or hardware generated, when I redid the file to 'all one hand' everything cut fine, straight lines, no excess rad's in the corners. It's all a bit odd really. Anyway bridge building continues. Kevan For what it's worth I opened that file in AutoCAD and it looks completely fine. There are no hidden lines or anything and the bars are all a consistant .42mm thick. What I think may of happened is that the cutting mat shifted for some reason. The cutter is "dumb" so if, for whatever reason, the cutting mat got stuck or slipped .2mm during the cut then the machine would just carry on regardless. It looks to me like it shifted .2mm either towards or away from the machine. Cheers, Jack Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ozzyo Posted February 18, 2014 Share Posted February 18, 2014 IIRC, the blade cutting edge is offset to one side sightly so by turning the drawing over the blade could have cut on its opposite side causing the parts to be reduced in size. If the correct size is 0.4mm and the blade has an offset of 0.1mm (after all 0.1mm is only 0.004") that would account for the size reduction down to 0.2mm. As it would take off an extra 0.1mm on both sides of the job. It could be handy to know this if the part was made out of T section. I'm not sure if this is the case, but it sounds plausible to me. OzzyO. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold JCL Posted February 18, 2014 Author RMweb Gold Share Posted February 18, 2014 I agree, the file does look absolutely right in Inkscape and Studio. The weird thing about the moving idea is that the horizontals and verticals that frame the diagonals look like they are the right thickness. Out of interest, did you try the "bad" file a second time, or just the once? I did once have a file cut very badly for no apparent reason, and the second time I cut the file (after rebooting my computer) it was ok. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Metalhip Posted February 18, 2014 Share Posted February 18, 2014 IIRC, the blade cutting edge is offset to one side sightly so by turning the drawing over the blade could have cut on its opposite side causing the parts to be reduced in size. If the correct size is 0.4mm and the blade has an offset of 0.1mm (after all 0.1mm is only 0.004") that would account for the size reduction down to 0.2mm. As it would take off an extra 0.1mm on both sides of the job. It could be handy to know this if the part was made out of T section. I'm not sure if this is the case, but it sounds plausible to me. OzzyO. The blade offset is where the point of the blade is in relation to the centre of the holder. The amount of offset determines whether corners are cut square,stretched or rounded. IIRC there is no offset adjustment in the Cameo software. Allan Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
katwigan Posted February 19, 2014 Share Posted February 19, 2014 Thanks for the input guys, Jack the only thing with the mat shifting idea is that after cutting the first 'opposite hand , bad one' it moved down the page and cut the next original hand one ok, then went bad again. The idea of the blade offset causing the problem seems to be logical, although it didn't show up on the other section of bridge that I did and I think ( scratches his head and tries to remember ) I mirrored that one also. Jason, no I haven't run it again ( see first line to Jack ) as I got two good ones and two bad ones alternating down the page. I did however achieve a new 'low' by cutting 0.2mm wide bars,although many of them didn't survive the removal from the extra sticky cutting mat trauma and the ones that did got treated with disdain. Oh the small items on the r/h side of the file work fine to produce a set of steps, gluing a plain and a slotted section together to allow steps to be inserted into the slot. actually probably needs the slots to be opened up a bit to enable use of 0.010" or 0.015" material. Cheers Kevan Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jpendle Posted February 22, 2014 Share Posted February 22, 2014 Just came across an interesting feature when trying to use the cutter to cut Scalesecenes kits. First I converted the Scalescenes PDF to a JPG file, as the Silhouette software won't import PDF files. I then loaded the JPG to the Silhouette software and added cut lines around the various pieces, I then printed it out and then cut it. Af ter I'd done this I compared the pieces I'd cut to some I'd cut by hand and founs that they were bigger, around 10% bigger! There was seemed to be no prin options to fix this, so I ended up creating 9mm line in the Silhouette software so that I could correctly shrink the JPG image down until the long edge of one of the pieces I was cutting measured 9mm, I did this on both the horizontal and vertical axes to make sure that I'd scaled the JPG correctly. So now my kits are the right size and I can cut them on the cutter. John P Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeOxon Posted February 22, 2014 Share Posted February 22, 2014 (edited) JPendle said: "I then printed it out and then cut it. After I'd done this I compared the pieces I'd cut to some I'd cut by hand and founs that they were bigger, around 10% bigger! " You could check the preference settings in the Studio software, There are settings in 'Studio' for import options, in the File | Preferences menu. Make sure you select the option to import "as is" - mine was initially set to "Fit to Page" I also note that there are printer options too - mine was on 300dpi, which I have changed to 1200dpi - hopefully for crisper details. Also, i always convert images to TIFF rather than JPEG, since the compression applied to JPGs can 'lose' fine details. Mike Edited February 22, 2014 by MikeOxon Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jpendle Posted February 22, 2014 Share Posted February 22, 2014 Thanks Mike I knew there had to be an option somewhere but I was looking at the print options. BTW I can't use TIFF as I need colour for the Scalescenes kits John P Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeOxon Posted February 22, 2014 Share Posted February 22, 2014 Thanks Mike I knew there had to be an option somewhere but I was looking at the print options. BTW I can't use TIFF as I need colour for the Scalescenes kits John P I'm not sure I understand your comment re. TIFF. The format can handle colour and is what I've used for my printed coach sides, as described in my blog post at http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/blog/1405/entry-13122-instant-chocolate-with-cream/ Mike Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jpendle Posted February 22, 2014 Share Posted February 22, 2014 The PDF to TIFF converter that I tried will only do greyscale TIFF. But if I convert to BMP or JPG I get full colour. I'll look online for another converter. John P Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beatty 139 Posted February 25, 2014 Share Posted February 25, 2014 (edited) I have just had an issue that I cannot find noted elsewhere. I have produced a file to test my recently purchased machine cutting out strapping for wagons. I have produced a DXF file in autocad as I normally would for my laser, but when I open it in the Silhouette software the file is not to scale and as far as i can work out it may be treating a unit as imperial not metric. Any Suggestions? I should say that I have also tried saving the file from Corel with the same effect. Regards Andy Edited February 25, 2014 by Beatty 139 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rods_of_Revolution Posted February 25, 2014 Share Posted February 25, 2014 I have just had an issue that I cannot find noted elsewhere. I have produced a file to test my recently purchased machine cutting out strapping for wagons. I have produced a DXF file in autocad as I normally would for my laser, but when I open it in the Silhouette software the file is not to scale and as far as i can work out it may be treating a unit as imperial not metric. Any Suggestions? I should say that I have also tried saving the file from Corel with the same effect. Regards Andy You can try changing the units in the Silhouette software. Go File>Preferences...>Measurements Tab and then change the units, I think the default is Inches. Cheers, Jack Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold JCL Posted February 25, 2014 Author RMweb Gold Share Posted February 25, 2014 Hi Andy, When I save from Inkscape I choose mm as the unit as per Jack. I also make sure I have "fit to page" turned off in Silhouette Studio preferences. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beatty 139 Posted February 26, 2014 Share Posted February 26, 2014 Hi Andy, When I save from Inkscape I choose mm as the unit as per Jack. I also make sure I have "fit to page" turned off in Silhouette Studio preferences. Many Thanks It was the fit to page that was causing me an issue, all i need to do now is work out why it appears to be seeing multiple lines when I know the original cad art work is clean. One other question, the plotter is cutting the straight lines then curves as opposed to treating the whole shape as a pollyline is this normal or another setting I am yet to find on the learning curve? Regards Andy Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jpendle Posted February 27, 2014 Share Posted February 27, 2014 That's certainly normal if you use the Silhouette software. If you draw a rectangle it cuts it as one shape. If you draw 4 lines as a rectangle it cuts 4 lines John P Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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