Need dxf pattern help

[olsenla]

Hi everyone,

I'm new here--purchased a "C" machine last December. I have purchased and made a few "projects of the month" and they turned out pretty well. I am now interested in vector carving a few jewelry box lids for my daughters. I am going to put their name on it using centerline text and I was going to put a small carving of something that interests them. I have been trying for a week and a half to convert either one of the attached images into either a dxf file for vector carving or a carve pattern or both. I have not had any luck. I should mention that I want the carve to be 2 to 2 1/2 inches tall, so I'm guessing less detail is better. I have a Mac computer and have tried Inkscape, Designer, DXF Importer, and Pattern Editor. I'm lost!! Can someone help me out.

Thanks,
Larry

[eelamb]

Welcome to the forum. Here is one I threw together . If you like it send me a PM with your email address and I will send it to you.

[lawrence]

Hi and welcome-- here's a small 60 degree vector is Eddie's pattern isn't to your liking (and I like his pattern very much)

Lawrence

[bjbethke]

Hi everyone,

I'm new here--purchased a "C" machine last December. I have purchased and made a few "projects of the month" and they turned out pretty well. I am now interested in vector carving a few jewelry box lids for my daughters. I am going to put their name on it using centerline text and I was going to put a small carving of something that interests them. I have been trying for a week and a half to convert either one of the attached images into either a dxf file for vector carving or a carve pattern or both. I have not had any luck. I should mention that I want the carve to be 2 to 2 1/2 inches tall, so I'm guessing less detail is better. I have a Mac computer and have tried Inkscape, Designer, DXF Importer, and Pattern Editor. I'm lost!! Can someone help me out.

Thanks,
Larry

You could make that several ways, will these help? You will need to load the font on your computer to see the Centerline image.

[olsenla]

Thank you all very much!! You all had so much success in a few hours. I like them all and have been able to get Lawrence's and bjbethke's to load and they look great. I will be sending Eddie a PM because even though my first choice was a vector carve, I really like the pattern he came up with and would like to try it. If I could tell you what I did, maybe you could tell me where I went wrong. I didn't have any luck with the colored image. The only thing I could get to work was to bring it into designer and make a pattern with it. Trouble is when I changed size to fit on board it distorted badly. The line drawing I imported into Inkscape, did a bitmap trace, saved as a .dfx on desktop then imported into DFX Importer. It looked like it had a double line on the image so I zoomed in and deleted all the extra till I had just one basic image. I scaled it to approximately the right size, selected a board size and moved it into designer. It looked OK till I tried to fine tune the size and position and then the image distorted. I don't have any idea what to do with Pattern Editor. Again thanks for the help, but if you could take a few minutes and try to tell me where I went wrong, I would really appreciate it.

Thanks,
Larry

[bjbethke]

Thank you all very much!! You all had so much success in a few hours. I like them all and have been able to get Lawrence's and bjbethke's to load and they look great. I will be sending Eddie a PM because even though my first choice was a vector carve, I really like the pattern he came up with and would like to try it. If I could tell you what I did, maybe you could tell me where I went wrong. I didn't have any luck with the colored image. The only thing I could get to work was to bring it into designer and make a pattern with it. Trouble is when I changed size to fit on board it distorted badly. The line drawing I imported into Inkscape, did a bitmap trace, saved as a .dfx on desktop then imported into DFX Importer. It looked like it had a double line on the image so I zoomed in and deleted all the extra till I had just one basic image. I scaled it to approximately the right size, selected a board size and moved it into designer. It looked OK till I tried to fine tune the size and position and then the image distorted. I don't have any idea what to do with Pattern Editor. Again thanks for the help, but if you could take a few minutes and try to tell me where I went wrong, I would really appreciate it.

Thanks,
Larry

The double lines on a vector drawing is normal, what you need to do is fill in the closed loops with a solid color so it will outline the image.

I don't have the CW DXF program so I use the ai2mpc program to work with DXF type files. Hope this helps. BJB

[bjbethke]

Larry, welcome to the forum, I made a short PDF about correcting extra line on images made with the ai2mpc program.

[olsenla]

Thanks BJB,

The PDF explanation helped a lot. Since I have a Mac, I can't us ai2mpc, but I did use Inkscape to import the jpg and then change it to a dxf. I then used DXF Importer to bring it in and size it, but I left the double lines on it and brought it into Designer. I then removed all the extra lines and points and ended up with a pretty good looking pattern. According to the upload manager it looks like it's just over a 2 minute carve so I think it is there. I will try to carve it tonight. Thanks again for all your help.

Larry

[ladjr]

I need some help making a Pattern from a PDF. I have attached the PDF files.

Thanks

Leo

[gregsolano]

I need some help making a Pattern from a PDF. I have attached the PDF files.

Thanks

Leo

You can export the pdf to a picture format then I usually clean it up in paint.net and delete the background color or white and then save as a png file to import into designer. If your pdf software does not let you export to a picture file then do a print screen or use the snipping tool in newer windows versions and then paste into a paint program or I highly recommend paint.net to clean up and delete the background. It looks like these will be just cut outs so you would need to darken or trace the lines in paint.net then after you import into designer you will outline the patterns then apply a cut path.