backofanenvelope Posted January 19, 2014 Share Posted January 19, 2014 For those of you who are interested and have not seen elsewhere there is an excellent article on creating photo etching artwork in the current Model Railway Journal. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Horsetan Posted January 22, 2014 Share Posted January 22, 2014 Also stumbled across I've got to get my head around AutoCad if it kills me. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
-missy- Posted January 22, 2014 Share Posted January 22, 2014 I've got to get my head around AutoCad if it kills me. Its just a series of lines joined up at the ends, easy peesy! M Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Horsetan Posted January 22, 2014 Share Posted January 22, 2014 Its just a series of lines joined up at the ends, easy peesy! That's not the problem. The bit I struggle with are how measurements are translated on the thing. I wanted to try to draw frames for the USATC S160. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
-missy- Posted January 22, 2014 Share Posted January 22, 2014 The way I do it is to import the scale drawing into ACad, scale it to the scale I need, then draw over the top of it. I can show you with some screen grabs if you need? M. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
-missy- Posted January 22, 2014 Share Posted January 22, 2014 OK, I did it anyway! Here we go... Step 1. In ACad, click on 'Attach' under the 'insert' tab. Select your drawing and click ok to insert, dont worry about the position or scales factor now, just select 'ok' for all the options. Step 2. Fade the picture by dragging the fade button under the 'picture' tab (which appears once the picture is selected). I normally go for around 80% which helps to make the lines more visable. Step 3. Draw some basic lines over a known dimension on the drawing and measure the distance. In this case the wheelbase was 76.5783mm. As I wanted to scale to 2mm:1ft and the wheelbase is 11ft6" I need to scale to 23mm. Therefore 23mm/76.5783mm = 0.3mm. Step 4. Click on the scale button, it will then ask to 'select items to scale' Step 5. Click and drag a box over the whole drawing with the left mouse button. Move from right to left as this will select everything. Once selected click ok (or hit return) to select then click on an origin for the scale (this could be anywhere but I usually click a corner of the drawing), then enter 0.3 as the scale factor. Step 6. And there you go! You should now have a scaled drawing ready for tracing the bits you need. Missy Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
artisan100 Posted January 22, 2014 Share Posted January 22, 2014 >"I wanted to try to draw frames for the USATC S160." That would be the easy part. The motion looks to be a bit more involved. Geoff Comet Models Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Horsetan Posted January 22, 2014 Share Posted January 22, 2014 The way I do it is to import the scale drawing into ACad, scale it to the scale I need, then draw over the top of it. I can show you with some screen grabs if you need? M. At last! Thank you thank you thank you thank you I've got AutoCAD 2005, so hopefully the principle will work there. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kenton Posted January 22, 2014 Share Posted January 22, 2014 Also stumbled across That was an enjoyable lesson - I hope there are others to follow - "pattern making" ? One day I promise to learn TurboCAD but my copy keeps failing to activate. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Horsetan Posted January 22, 2014 Share Posted January 22, 2014 ..... I promise to learn TurboCAD but my copy keeps failing to activate. I had a similar problem with CorelDRAW 12, but Mike G. solved the problem by lending me AutoCAD 2005 so that I could have a go at this CAD thing at last...... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike G Posted January 22, 2014 Share Posted January 22, 2014 That was an enjoyable lesson - I hope there are others to follow - "pattern making" ? One day I promise to learn TurboCAD but my copy keeps failing to activate. Kenton I have a feeling at the back of my mind that etchers now don't accept TurboCAD files. Certainly PPD don't. I may be wrong, but I don't think I am. I don't think TurboCAD saves files in the .DWG extension. Mike (Hard hat on and waiting to be shot down in flames) Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Etched Pixels Posted January 23, 2014 Share Posted January 23, 2014 Most etchers will accept postscript and there isn't a lot in vector form that won't spit out postscript. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeOxon Posted January 23, 2014 Share Posted January 23, 2014 Its just a series of lines joined up at the ends, easy peesy! M Yes, until you want to make them curvy! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pugsley Posted January 23, 2014 Share Posted January 23, 2014 I had a similar problem with CorelDRAW 12, but Mike G. solved the problem by lending me AutoCAD 2005 so that I could have a go at this CAD thing at last...... Interestingly (or not, perhaps), I use CorelDraw for scaling dimensions from photographs, in a similar way to that posted by Julia, above. I import a bitmap, preferably taken square-on to the subject, and use known dimensions to scale the unknown ones. It's not totally foolproof, but I have achieved accuracy of within 0.5mm of the scale dimension of a wagon wheelbase in 4mm scale, so it's pretty effective. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Horsetan Posted January 24, 2014 Share Posted January 24, 2014 Right....errm....got as far as Missy's Step 1...think I have a slight problem imitating Step 2 onwards, as AutoCAD2005 doesn't have the same layout / functions as her more-up-to-date version....... That fade thing has got to be in there somewhere..... *scratches head* Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arthur Posted January 24, 2014 Share Posted January 24, 2014 That looks familiar Ivan, Skinley? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Horsetan Posted January 24, 2014 Share Posted January 24, 2014 ...Skinley? The only consistent drawing I've got, unfortunately. All the others are distorted in some way. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
-missy- Posted January 24, 2014 Share Posted January 24, 2014 Right....errm....got as far as Missy's Step 1...think I have a slight problem imitating Step 2 onwards, as AutoCAD2005 doesn't have the same layout / functions as her more-up-to-date version....... That fade thing has got to be in there somewhere..... *scratches head* Hi. Try this then... Type 'IMAGEADJUST' into the command line, and hit return. Select the picture then hit return again, you should then get this box... ...where you can adjust the level of fade of the image. M. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Horsetan Posted January 24, 2014 Share Posted January 24, 2014 Aha.....thanks for this. I'll try that. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Horsetan Posted March 23, 2015 Share Posted March 23, 2015 As a sort of postscript to this, I've just found out that AutoCAD2005 works on XP at home, but does not work on Windows 7, so that's basically sabotaged my hope of being able to doodle in the office..... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quarryscapes Posted March 23, 2015 Share Posted March 23, 2015 Kenton I have a feeling at the back of my mind that etchers now don't accept TurboCAD files. Certainly PPD don't. I may be wrong, but I don't think I am. I don't think TurboCAD saves files in the .DWG extension. Mike (Hard hat on and waiting to be shot down in flames) YES IT DOES. It's how I'm getting from TurboCAD Pro 12 to sheets of brass via PPD at present. They seem to have had an "upgrade" recently where they can't now handle DXFs over about 50Mb in file size, which isn't an awful lot of drawing! (DXFs are ridiculously bulky files, so are PDFs). Modern software is so cumbersome, god bless my ancient TurboCAD! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grovenor Posted March 23, 2015 Share Posted March 23, 2015 You can get a free version of "Draftsight", works on windows at least up to 8.1 and on Linux. Reads and writes .dwg files. Keith Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymw Posted March 23, 2015 Share Posted March 23, 2015 AutoCAD2005 works on XP at home, but does not work on Windows 7 try http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows7/install-and-use-windows-xp-mode-in-windows-7 maybe you can't do that to your office m/c. or it may run in 'computability mode'. It will depend on the version of w7 that you have. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Horsetan Posted March 24, 2015 Share Posted March 24, 2015 try http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows7/install-and-use-windows-xp-mode-in-windows-7 maybe you can't do that to your office m/c. or it may run in 'computability mode'. It will depend on the version of w7 that you have. Neither method works. I think AutoCAD 2005 (which is 32-bit, I think) is just too old to run on Win7 (64-bit). Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mgbusa Posted March 24, 2015 Share Posted March 24, 2015 As I understand 32-bit and 64-bit are not compatible since I always got the pop-up message that I only can use 64-bit written software on my computer. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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