Introduction to using Inkscape to produce cutting files

[richbrummitt]

Hi Rich

 

I suppose it depends on how you work.

 

The way I work is to use the same thickness line across the whole drawing as the actual cut I'm making with the Cameo doesn't change thickness. My previous sticking point of lines changing thickness when I resized them caused me problems. The guide lines snapping to the edge and not the middle of the lines meant that when I then selected all and changed the lines to the same thickness, what previously lined up no longer did. It's not much of a difference, but was annoying. Obviously with that setting turned off it hopefully won't be a problem any more.

 

I don't often use fills because when I'm drawing out the layers I like to use the wireframe idea to make sure that everything still lines up as expected at the end. If I don't want to see a particular layer I just turn it off in the layer palette.

 

J

 

Sorry, I read what you wrote the other way around. I thought that you wanted to snap to the edge of the thickness of the line. Thinking about it I am sure that you can do this. If you want to snap to the middle then there is a setting to use the geometric bounding box rather than the visible bounding box. Change this preference in File -> Inkscape Preferences. I have my preferences set this way permanently now because I don't see why the other option would be useful. Other people will probably see this differently - like you say 'it depends how on how you work'.

[pete_mcfarlane]

 

Hi Pete, and I always, without exception use some tape to tape the plasticard down after one time when I'd left the cutter cutting my last piece of plasticard at the time for half an hour only to find it had rotated slightly. I've found that 3M Transpore medical tape is the best for me as it almost always comes off in one piece and doesn't remove the mat's glue.

 

I tried this last night, and apart from the intial run I had no problems with multiple cuts being out of alignment. The one issue I had was when the edge of the plasticard sheet was too close to the wheel on the powered roller. I guess it was catching and knocking the cutting sheet slightly out of alignment.

 

I also tried the approach of overlaying multiple drawings on top of each other, rather than sending the file to the cutter multiple times. The advantage is that you don't have to keep restarting the cutting when it finished. So I'll be using this method future.

[JCL]

Hi Mike, that's not quite what I was after, but I think Rich has it so I'll try that later. Thank you.

 

Pete, sorry, I should have said, the other thing I do is lay the plasticard onto the mat 1" in so it lines up with the 1" mark and tape it there. I started doing this because the rollers sometimes marked the plastic.

[JCL]

Just tried the settings, that's great! It's also solved another huge problem that I've had in that, for some reason, the visible bounding box would sometimes become a lot bigger than the geometric one, which made it very difficult to line things up. I think that's fixed it.

 

[JCL]

It's getting late  (or early), so here's a link to the Silhouette thread http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/79025-a-guide-to-using-the-silhouette-cameo-cutter/?p=1410011 I've put up a couple of quick first look findings on the new Silhouette Studio software.

[10800]

Try these snap settings:

snap.jpg

I just can't get to grips with snapping. Mike, could you please show how it's done, maybe with a simple panelled door where multiple copies are needed and it's more efficient to butt them all together?

 

Many thanks.

 

PS at the moment I'm just doing it manually by entering the appropriate x and y values, knowing the width of each door as per below.

 

Edited May 5, 2014 by 10800

[MikeTrice]

I will be honest and say a rarely use snapping preferring to do it by hand. I amnot in position to answer you question on snapping at the moment, but hope someone else can jump in and help you in the shortterm.

[JCL]

I often zoom in to quite a high magnification, then do it by hand, or I'll turn on snapping and "Snap to bounding box corners" as shown in the illustration below. You click on the three buttons in order from the top.

 

 

Then when I'm lining up the objects, I'll move them around until I get the message below. The object being snapped to becomes a red dotted line, the object you are moving shows the message above it, and the cross shows exactly where the snap is happening. Using "Snap to bounding box corners" means that your doors would be butted up next to each other, and would be vertically in line as well. When you first try it you might be doing a bit of waving the object around until you get that message. When you've snapped a few, you can group them, then copy and paste them and snap a number of doors at the same time.

 

 

I tend to use the same line width for all of my drawn objects, so I had a quick check to see what happens if you have different sized lines. The snap takes place in the centre of each line,not on the edge as you can see in the illustration below. Here I have the top right corner of a rectangle with a thick border, and the top left corner of a rectangle with a thin border. So if you are going to snap, and you are going to use different line widths, as far as I can see, you'll have to do it by hand, otherwise you can use the method above.

 

Edited May 5, 2014 by JCL

[MikeTrice]

Thanks Jason. Hopefully that will help Rod out.

 

Rod, there are many snap settings that will help you out so have a go at some of the others.

 

If you cannot see the options Jason has show go to View -> Snap, then ensure that the top button is depressed showing that snapping is enabled. As Jason has shown, when dragging an object near to a snap point Inkscape gives you a prompt for what it has found.

 

The sensitivity of the snap can be adjusted in File -> Document Properties.

 

For your doors you would be best grouping each door before duplication and snapping. Please let us know if this works for you?

[10800]

Many thanks both - I'm away until the end of the week but I'll have a play at the weekend and let you know.

[10800]

Yes, the snapping function works, many thanks; and Mike, yes I was grouping the doors - in fact it's easiest to group one and duplicate, then group those to make four, then eight etc.

 

The next issue (and sorry if this has been covered before) relates to the pros and cons of cutting direct from Inkscape versus saving as a DXF file and importing to Silhouette. Take a coach window for instance, with rounded corners done as a modified rectangle in Inkscape. It will cut directly but with little or no influence on blade pressure so you have to cut several times and punch out (using 10 thou plastic card); but if transferred to Silhouette as a DXF, I lose the rounded corners - but have the greater flexibility over cut parameters.

 

Is there a way round this? I seem to remember there was a 'controller' being developed for use with Inkscape - option greyed out on my version - but has anything resulted? Why is the rounded corner detail lost in the DXF conversion?

[JCL]

Hi Rod,

 

The rounded corner detail is lost because Inkscape doesn't export a proper DXF file. On those rounded corners, you need to select the rounded rectangle object, and then convert it into a path using the Path -> Object to Path menu option. You will find that the rounded corners will export and import properly.

 

For me, I can't install the Silhouette cutter driver, so I always use Silhouette Studio to cut. It's a pain in that it doubles up the number of files I have, but I like the options. I've got a process going now, which has got better with the latest version of Studio. For me, I'd have the best of both worlds it if the Studio cutting form could be added to Inkscape as an extension, unfortunately the "Connector" only supports a couple of high end graphic apps. The next version of Inkscape itself will be introducing cutter support, but I don't know what this means in detail though.

 

Mike can tell you a bit more about his method which uses the Inkscape extension.

 

cheers

 

Jason

[richbrummitt]

I just can't get to grips with snapping. Mike, could you please show how it's done, maybe with a simple panelled door where multiple copies are needed and it's more efficient to butt them all together?

 

Many thanks.

 

PS at the moment I'm just doing it manually by entering the appropriate x and y values, knowing the width of each door as per below.

 

intdoors_drawing.jpg

 

A more efficient workflow would be to create a tiled clone of the grouped object. There's a good example in the inkscape tutorial of how to do this for the majority of eventualities.

 

The biggest potential benefit is that the parts remain linked to the base pattern (unless you alter this) so it you change the object then every object in the pattern updates.

Edited May 14, 2014 by richbrummitt

[JCL]

Thanks Rich, I can see when that would be really useful.

[sleeper]

Hi Mike

Previously I had no knowledge of Inkscape whatsoever and I've only just started on this 'course', I'm finding it really informative and interesting so thank you for taking the time to post up such clear concise instruction. I'm only on page 2 at the moment but already I can do things I couldn't do before.

Thanks again.

 

Roly 

[sleeper]

When I click on the rectangle icon in Inkscape and open up a rectangle on the page it always has rounded corners and is filled with colour, I can't find what is causing it or how to correct it.

Can someone help me with this please. 

[MikeTrice]

So starting with this:

 

First from the Object menu select Fill and Stroke, then in the resulting options window click on "Fill" then click on the cross to turn fill off:

 

The image now appears thus:

 

Now click on the Node Edit button (top left) and note the handles that appear around the object. Select the one shown and drag it upwards reducing the curvature of the corners until they are right angles:

 

Hopefully you will end up with:

 

Inkscape remembers the characteristics of the last object drawn, so subsequent rectangles should be unfilled with straight corners.

[sleeper]

Mike thanks for the prompt reply and the advice. I had done that before but wondered if it could be stopped 'at source' I wasn't aware of the memory thing though.

Presumably you have to save your work for the image to be memorised.

 

thanks again.

 

Roly

Edited October 19, 2014 by sleeper

[MikeTrice]

I think I have confused things. On my setup if a drag a rectangle onto the page and set its characteristics, the next rectangle I drag has the same corner settings. Nothing to do with saving the drawing.

[JCL]

Hi Roly, I'm not near my computer at the moment, but try this, http://www.inkscapeforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6492

 

I seem to think it worked for me.

 

Cheers

 

Jason

[sleeper]

Jason

The page brought up by that link didn't seem relevant to my original query, maybe I've missed something, but the forum it was contained in looked very interesting if maybe a little too advanced for me at the moment, I joined anyway.

Now what page was I on, 3 I think, back to work!

[JCL]

Sorry Roly, I'm back at my computer now, I was thinking about your colour issue in particular.

 

Unfortunately you cannot set up the default line thickness, colour and style before you actually draw a line, which is annoying. You must draw something first, amend the line thickness, style, colour and fill, and then tell Inkscape that you want every new line to look the same as the one you've just amended. That's what this bit below does.

1. Draw a line,
2. Set stroke color and style as needed for the new default (as per Mike's post above)
3. In the top left, click on the File menu, then on Inkscape Preferences
4. In the list of Tools on the left, click on Pen
5. On the right, click on the 'This tool's own style', and then click on the Take from selection button.

From now on, until you change it again, the line style and colour will default to these new settings.

 

The rounded corner thing should hopefully be a bit more straightforward. The amount of curve is set up in Rx and Ry (radius on the x or horizontal axis and radius on the y or vertical axis) at the top of the workspace. Draw your rectangle, edit the values in Rx and Ry to be 0 (zero). Delete your rectangle. Now when you create a new rectangle it will have square edges.

 

Hope that helps

 

cheers

 

Jason

[sleeper]

yes that's great Jason thanks

[Dave at Honley Tank]

About 3-4 years ago I saw this machine or one like it on a  TV craft programme that my wife was watching (she's very much into card crafting - among other crafts). The presenters made no reference to connecting to a computer, it worked by plugging in cartridges which were purchased separately. 

I did some research  &| decided that it was possible to connect to a pc. The next time this programme was on the same subject I suggested to Margaret that the machine could be useful to both of us & would she like one as a birthday present, - it was about £300 at the time!

As she's not particularly happy using digital devices her answer was no; and I dismissed the idea because I was still uncertain about compatible drawing programs and it seemed a dam*** expensive way of cutting card.

A chance lost, but now regained; and I thank you lot on here, particularly Jason & Mike. Santa already has my letter!

Incidentally I went down the route of producing etching drawings and had some etches done, but with too many errors for boosting my confidence!

Another missed chance, now also an accepted method; is extruded polystyrene.About twenty five years ago I found out that our new caravan was of "bonded construction". Questions revealed that that meant that the caravan body was basically expanded (actually its "extruded" but what's in a word?) polystyrene, bonded to aluminium on the outside and to high quality plywood on the inside, and rigidity is all down to the foam. My brain was then shot into railway modelling mode with "how can I use that idea to make my baseboards lighter and more rigid?"

Ah well! perhaps one day I'll follow up one of my 'brilliant' ideas.

Thanks all; this is a brilliant thread; wish I'd found it ( been directed to it - thanks Ralph ) sooner.

 

Dave

[Dave at Honley Tank]

Mike,

 You are really stretching well beyond the call of duty with your tutorials and I’m laboriously working through them in order to get to grips with this Inkscape prog.

Many, many thanks

However there’s always a “but”!

I’m on page two and have duplicated the rectangle that we are supposed to bend into a gable end shape. I’ve got that rectangle into “node edit mode” but the two top nodes totally refuse to be selected, meaning that I can’t get the desired extra nod when in “add node”.

I’ve gone back to the earlier exercise abode nodes and repeated them but I just cant get this bit to work.

The prog. has closed on me several times while trying to select the two nodes saying something about an internal fault.

Any ideas please Mike.

Indeed has any body else some idea of what I can possibly be doing wrong.

 

Dave