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Introduction to using Inkscape to produce cutting files


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As someone who has had two previous attempts to get to grips with this technology, once with Silhouette and once with Inkscape, and, despite the excellent tutorials of Mike Trice and JCL, suffered near break-downs, I have steeled myself for a further go.

 

I must again thank Mike for the effort involved in teaching us all, and for his clear and comprehensible tutorials.

 

Having made it a certain way through Mike's posts with success, I reached the point at which the difficulties in cutting rounded corners from an Inkscape file were canvassed.  I am not sure I quite followed the discussion, but the upshot appeared to me that without purchasing more software and/or learning to do something else clever yet laborious, the Silhouette cutter would fail to cut properly those nice rounded coach windows, even with 10 thou plasticard.

 

This made me question whether I had set off down the right path by choosing Inkscape.

 

I model in 4mm scale, in case that's relevant, and, though custom windows for structures would be helpful, the main impetus for using a Silhouette cutter is to produce panelled coach sides and ends.

 

A number of the older prototypes have lights rounded only at the top, but I understand that is not a problem.  Most will have 4 rounded corners.  This is the hardest thing to do by hand, hence the need, as opposed to convenience, of a Silhouette cutter, for me, largely boils down to rounded coach lights, the one thing I now learn is a cutting issue if using Inkscape.  

 

In the circumstances, would I be better starting over with the Silhouette software?

 

Yours

 

Confused of the North

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Edwardian: I would expect you to be able to do what you want using Inkscape and the Silhouette cutter without a problem. If you can give me a specific prototype you are trying to do I will see what I can do to assist.

 

Mike, that is very kind. 

 

At the moment I am looking to provide stock for a freelance Great Eastern-sponsored East Anglian Light Railway in 4mm scale.  There are currently 2 sets of stock in contemplation for which I have scale drawings:

 

1. The Line's own stock.  x5 4-wheel coaches 23' to 26' in length. I see this as relatively old stock, so have settled on a Metropolitan design of the 1870s. This design has features typical of the period: Upper horizontal panels with conventional rounded ends, but rounded tops and rectangular bottoms to the quarter lights and adjacent vertical panels, and, just to be awkward, raised beading to form horizontal panels along the waist.  I suspect the latter might be after-applied if I can find or produce something suitable.  I have suitable 4mm drawings of all the coaches.

 

2. A visiting Great Eastern train. x5-6 34' 6-wheelers. This would represent mainline coaches of the 1880s-1890s.  Pre-1896 these, too, have rounded tops and square bottoms to the quarter lights.  I will probably be able to derive all the types required from the available drawings.

 

To be clear, whereas the quarter lights and adjacent panels generally seen on most companies' stock from at least the 1880s features rounded corner rectangles with small radius curves for the corners, the 1870s/pre-1896 GE look has right-angles at the base of the panels and quarter lights and large radius corners at the top.

 

When it comes to GNR coaches, I realise that I will benefit square panelling (I hope to have odd GN coaches running as MGN stock, and a mainline 6-wheel GNR rake at some point before too long, but these are third and fourth priority at present), so I have made awkward choices to start with!

 

It is, perhaps evident from these examples why I feel that a Silhouette cutter is the only way forward.  I should add that I do not own a Silhouette cutter yet, but am hoping to before the end of the year.  In the meantime, I feel I need to master the necessary software and produce some designs, if I can.

 

It is not, I confess, something that I find comes naturally to me!

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It is not, I confess, something that I find comes naturally to me!

I've always struggled with drawing on the computer, but have made better progress since I've had Inkscape. I've yet to produce anything much with my Silhouette though, just some point motor bases, and a couple of 7mm scale doors and windows. I think I'll be starting on a few 7mm scale card buildings soon, partly using enlarged 4mm Scalescenes kits, and this would be a great opportunity to get practice at cutting windows, that are a fairly straightforward starting point. Then I can work up gradually. Can you make any simple bits for the buildings at Castle Aching to start with?

 

I need to work up to coach building too, as I want to make the GER coaches that the Kent & East Sussex Railway had. I think they were discussed in the Castle Aching topic, or somewhere else Edwardian hangs out.

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Going back through this thread I have covered a lot of techniques, and am pleasantly surprised by the number of people that have found it useful and managed to make some progress.

 

In hindsight it would probably be useful to have some specific examples and build them up from scratch using a variety of techniques. Edwardian has requested help regarding producing artwork for producing coach sides and I would suggest this is a good aspect to start with. However if anyone would like to see other areas covered please feel free to suggest them.

 

JCL has also started a thread based on Inkscape to produce GNR coach sides (http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/114254-using-a-single-drawing-for-many-processes/). At this stage I have no idea how basic he intends his thread to be, however for this thread I will try and bear the beginner in mind.

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Keep with it my friend, I was where you are about a year ago thinking I would never do it but with all the help I had from here I got there so you'll do it. Steve

 

Thank you, support and encouragement goes a long way!

 

 

I've always struggled with drawing on the computer, but have made better progress since I've had Inkscape. I've yet to produce anything much with my Silhouette though, just some point motor bases, and a couple of 7mm scale doors and windows. I think I'll be starting on a few 7mm scale card buildings soon, partly using enlarged 4mm Scalescenes kits, and this would be a great opportunity to get practice at cutting windows, that are a fairly straightforward starting point. Then I can work up gradually. Can you make any simple bits for the buildings at Castle Aching to start with?

 

I need to work up to coach building too, as I want to make the GER coaches that the Kent & East Sussex Railway had. I think they were discussed in the Castle Aching topic, or somewhere else Edwardian hangs out.

 

Yes, we did discuss these.  The GER sold off a number of old 4-wheelers around the turn of the century.  We discussed them as a natural acquisition for the West Norfolk Railway, and I would like to add some to stock. 

 

Andy G, uax6 of this Parish, kindly supplied me with drawings of the Colonel Stephens pair, which I may have passed on to you? 

 

They are also of the rounded top, square bottom ilk!

 

 

for this thread I will try and bear the beginner in mind.

 

Thanks!

 

And thank you again for all the time and effort you have put into helping the community with these posts, including techno-dullards like me!

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Yes, we did discuss these.  The GER sold off a number of old 4-wheelers around the turn of the century.  We discussed them as a natural acquisition for the West Norfolk Railway, and I would like to add some to stock. 

 

Andy G, uax6 of this Parish, kindly supplied me with drawings of the Colonel Stephens pair, which I may have passed on to you? 

 

They are also of the rounded top, square bottom ilk!

We did discuss them, and you did pass them on. They could be good ones to start with, as they're quite small, and we both want them, but in different scales.

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We did discuss them, and you did pass them on. They could be good ones to start with, as they're quite small, and we both want them, but in different scales.

 

Apologies, John.  Consistent with my post (#154) I sent Mike a choice of GER coaches of the 1880-90s and LSWR ones of the 1870s 

 

Both types, in common with the GER 1867 Brake Thirds that went to K&ESR, featured the square bottom and round-topped quarter lights and panels.  The Metropolitan/LSWR one that Mike is using is very close indeed to the ex-GER K&ESR pair.  Both types feature the same panelling styles, including raised beading on the waists.

 

Why "Metropolitan"?  Well it refers to Metropolitan Carriage & Wagon Co, rather than Metropolitan Railway.  The LSWR coaches were ordered from Metropolitan, and G R Weddell, noticing their similarity with Metropolitan coaches built for other railways, concluded that it was a Metropolitan design rather than a LSWR design.  For later batches it seems that the SW tweak the design to smaller radius curves in all 4 corners.

 

On this basis I decided that the West Norfolk Railway might have ordered similar coaches from Metropolitan new in the early '70s.  Later, around the turn of the Century, it will have acquired the, similar, late 1860s GE coaches second hand! 

 

The GE coaches of the 1880s and 1890s are more modern in appearance save that, up to a point in the mid to late '90s, they were still building them with square bottoms and rounded tops to the quarter lights and vertical panels, which lends them a somewhat archaic appearance to my mind. 

 

The point is, I think, that if you can do the Metropolitan-designed LSWR coach, you can do any of the GE coaches, include the pair you're after. Well that's the theory!

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Gentlemen, I am considering switching to the GER coaches for the simple reason I have good photographic references for these type of coaches. Yes, they feature the curved top, square based windows you would like illustrated. Would this be OK?

Edited by MikeTrice
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18

Gentlemen, I am considering switching to the GER coaches for the simple reason I have good photographic references for these type of coaches. Yes, they feature the curved top, square based windows you would like illustrated. Would this be OK?

 

 

I think it matters not, because the basics of multi-layered panelled coaches will be common to all types, and the GER coaches feature the same window shapes as the Metropolitan LSW types. I would like to build both in due course anyway!

 

I would just be grateful to be taken through producing a cutting file from a drawing.

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Gentlemen, I am considering switching to the GER coaches for the simple reason I have good photographic references for these type of coaches. Yes, they feature the curved top, square based windows you would like illustrated. Would this be OK?

24

 

Yes please. I've e-mailed the author of the article (I'm pretty certain it's him anyway!) to ask if he has a better drawing for us to work from.

 

Will this be a new topic, so it's easier to keep track of?

Edited by BG John
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  • RMweb Gold

JCL has also started a thread based on Inkscape to produce GNR coach sides (http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/114254-using-a-single-drawing-for-many-processes/). At this stage I have no idea how basic he intends his thread to be, however for this thread I will try and bear the beginner in mind.

 

Hi Mike

 

I'm afraid work has meant that I had to let my thread slip last week. Your guide is very thorough, so instead of reinventing the wheel, I added a link to here. My intention is that people will have read this thread and know how to use the basics before following what I'm up to. Of course, if anyone wants me to spell something out in more detail then I can do that.

 

cheers

 

Jason

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Just discovered a useful function.

 

I wanted to select all the red lines. To date I would have gone through them one by one until I had them all.

 

So the easy option is select just one of them:

post-3717-0-23233700-1476124568_thumb.jpg

 

Now select "Edit->Select Same->Stroke Colour":

post-3717-0-87933000-1476124570_thumb.jpg

 

And bingo all the red lines have been selected:

post-3717-0-56441600-1476124571_thumb.jpg

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  • 3 months later...

H Mike

I have been inspired to consider buying a Silouette cutter by the models produced by a member of our little O gauge group. I have gone through the helpful instructions you produced some time ago, using Inkscape to draw the Coal Hut. I was OK until I came to try deleting the score lines from the Cut 20 thou layer. At this point the programme continually stalled and the score lines appeared not to be deleted. I found that there were multiple copies of the same lines on the drawing. This also applied to the lines in the the main structure. I had to laboriously delete the excess lines one at a time. I copied the drawing from the master to the 3 layers using the Ctrl+D to copy and Shift + Page Up to transfer the copy to the relevant layer. This also appeared to cause the programme to stop responding.

I know it's some time since you covered this topic, but do you have any idea what may have gone wrong.

Cheers

Dennis

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I haven't had a problem with Inkscape freezing when copying lines/shapes to different layers (or indeed at all), but I do sometimes (often?) find that I have inadvertently duplicated shapes, so that there are multiple shapes covering each other. 

 

There are two ways of selecting shapes - clicking on the shape selects the topmost copy, whereas using the selector tool (the top icon {an arrow} on the left) to enclose the shape selects all the shapes within it, so that if there are multiple copies on top of each other, they are all selected.  You can ckeck whether you have selected multilpe shapes as at the very bottom of the screen it tells you how many and what types of shapes are selected.

 

Mick

 

Edited to correct a spelling mistake

Edited by MickRalph
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  • 4 weeks later...

It is very difficult to determine which of the various topics to post this in. As it is predominently Inkscape related I have chosen to put it here.

 

Occassionally I have had an issue when trying to send artwork to the Silhouette machine when the Pen tool is selected. With a previous version of Silhouette Studio basic it worked but I got some diagonal spurious lines thrown in for good measure. Later versions of Silhouette Studio just crash, all very frustrating.

 

I have been in conversation with Silhouette America about the problem and think I have tracked down the root cause of the crash. Probably simpler if I illustrate.

 

Here I have a rectangle that has been converted from an object to a path. Inkscape correctly tells me it is a path comprising 4 nodes:

post-3717-0-85914000-1487083653_thumb.jpg

 

I save the Inkscape file as a dxf and then close Inkscape. I now open the created dxf file using Inkscape itself. If I lasso select my rectangle it reports 5 objects being found:

post-3717-0-59974000-1487083654_thumb.jpg

 

What appears to have happened is when creating the dxf file Inkscape has added a zero length line segment to the end of the original path:

post-3717-0-24855100-1487083655_thumb.jpg

 

Unsurprisingly Studio opens the file and everything appears to be well. Sending the file to the Silhouette machine appears to cut correctly with a ratchet blade but when the pen tool is chosen the software crashes.

 

Instead I select the original path in Inkscape and select all nodes and then break the path at the nodes:

post-3717-0-28584800-1487084070_thumb.jpg

 

Having done that I can now select the path again and click on Path->Break Apart. Selecting all the paths correctly reports there are 4 line segments:

post-3717-0-62426200-1487083656_thumb.jpg

 

Save the resulting Inkscape file as a dxf and then open the dxf in Inkscape we only have 4 lines present in the dxf file. No zero length lines present.:

post-3717-0-40712600-1487083657_thumb.jpg

 

Subsequently open the dxf file in Studio and the crash goes away.

 

Having notified Silhouette America of the issue, should they wish to amend Studio to handle zero length lines gracefully I will now be raising a bug with the Inkscape community.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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As promised I raised a bug on the Inkscape forum and I think a resolution has been reached.

 

First of a new version of Inkscape was released in January 2017 so the latest version (0.92 r15299) was downloaded and installed. The next piece of advice regarded the dxf export options presented. Apparently the favourate option is to only select the LWPOLYLINE setting. On re saving my original drawing in the new version and reopening in Inkscape I get a four sided rectangle with 4 nodes so looking good at this point. I just need the time now to test the file in Silhouette Studio which might not be until late tomorrow night.

Edited by MikeTrice
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There was discussion in Jason's original Silhouette thread of the DXF eport options and the conclusion I had come to was that exopoting to DXF required using the LWPolyline option.  However, I don't use the export to DXF format, as I purchased the Designer Edition of Silhoutte Studio, which imports SVG files straight from Inkscape.

 

Mick

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  • 9 months later...

I have produced several Inkscape files for objects of interest to me and have even successfully scribed a few trial versions of them on my Silhouette by following the various tutorials but I'd like to get a bit more sophisticated in my use of my Portrait.

 

What I would like to do is scribe some parts of the proposed model and cut the rest but so far I have settled for just using the blade to part-cut (=scribe) through 10thou plastic sheet and then gone all over the printed output with a scalpel to remove the bits that I really wanted to cut right through while leaving the lines I merely wanted to scribe as they came out of my Silhoutte. .  I have differentiated which is to be which by colouring the to-be-scribed lines red and the to-be-cut lines black but cannot find any description of how to set up the print job to achieve my intention.  I presume the way to do this is to run the job twice, once with a pen and once with a blade so do I need to send two files to the Silhoutte or what?

 

If his has been already covered in the various tutorials, please excuse me.  I have looked at the index on one of the threads and (re-)read what I thought were probably the relevant sections without finding what I seek.

 

I'll be very grateful for a pointer to where the process is described or even a reply to this plea.

 

TIA,

 

Stan

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If you have produced artwork in more than one colour in Inkscape, the colour information will go with it when saved as a dxf and imported into the Silhouette Studio software.

 

When you go to send to the cutter select "Advanced" rather than "Standard" in the options. With "Advanced" you can select individual colours to send to the Silhouette:

post-3717-0-66143800-1511183299_thumb.jpg

 

In other words if you were to, for example, produce artwork with red lines for the scoring and black lines for the cut right through, you can select all the red lines and send to the cutter with the blade only half extended, then send the black to the cutter with the blade extended to cut right through. Just ensure you do not eject the carrier mat in between.

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If you have produced artwork in more than one colour in Inkscape, the colour information will go with it when saved as a dxf and imported into the Silhouette Studio software.

 

When you go to send to the cutter select "Advanced" rather than "Standard" in the options. With "Advanced" you can select individual colours to send to the Silhouette:

attachicon.gifplotsettings.jpg

 

In other words if you were to, for example, produce artwork with red lines for the scoring and black lines for the cut right through, you can select all the red lines and send to the cutter with the blade only half extended, then send the black to the cutter with the blade extended to cut right through. Just ensure you do not eject the carrier mat in between.

Thanks Mike, I'll give that a go and report back!

 

Many thanks,

 

Stan

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