Ver 2.004 makes me feel like a beginner - what is this problem?

[DocWheeler]

I mentioned one of these problems a few days ago and got no help.
Now I have more to add!

I'm trying to design a sign and I'm having problems/questions with the text.
The sign looks like this:66962
There are two problems that I'm having with it.
The first is that the size of the letter does not match the actual letter size.
The second is that I can not raise the letters to the top surface, they are at .283.

To test this, I added a test region with the letter X in it BOTH WITH 0.00 DEPTH.
These have an actual depth of .208.66963 66964
Note that the depth shows 0.00 and yet the Z depth shows 0.208 in the bottom-left (unable to have this show).

Here is a shot with neither the X or region highlighted. 66965 The K is highlighted showing the exaggerated size.
Note that the dimensions of the X in the third picture is larger than the size of the region and yet it is contained within it!

What am I doing wrong here?
The mpc is too large to include.

[liquidguitars]

is larger than the size of the region and yet it is contained within it!

That's odd... I wonder since the letters are few, would it be better to trace them by hand and put a puff on it? just thinking out loud...

[SteveEJ]

Strange Ken.. Brandon may be on to a solution until the engineers can look at it. You have the puffing tools? I don't. That's the only thing I have not purchased.

[bergerud]

You need to upload the mpc. If it is the puffing that makes it too big, unpuff and upload. I know there are some problems with changing size using points Vs dragging. Also I have seen the letters get closer to the top of the bounding box as they are made bigger.

[SteveEJ]

Ken.. See if you can ZIP the file, rename it to 'filename.zip.mpc' and upload it. We can delete the '.mpc' and unzip it then.

[mtylerfl]

Hi Ken,

Another approach would be to use the "Make Pattern" feature to create patterns of your puffed letters and the ampersand. After that's done, you should have complete control of size, depth, placement and height I believe.


...what the heck...I took a few minutes and did a quick mock-up (I used some artistic license to make the letters more rounded, and did NOT convert the letters to patterns, but certainly could!)

[DocWheeler]

Thanks Bergerud, attached is the project without text-mods.
The X and associated carve region had no text-mods anyway.

Steve, the compression was only 3%, not nearly enough.

Michael, It blew up my gooey; maybe there is another problem there.

I've messed around with the k&h a bit trying to get them to the surface; no luck.

In the Test Group, hide the carve region and note the height of the X.
It was never modified to have a dome or anything; note the dimensions of the X and carve-region.

[bergerud]

The thin rectangle at the bottom has merge style additive. It runs across the letters.

[mtylerfl]

Hi Ken,

I puffed the "k" to 0.2" and made the "h" zero-depth. I also hid the narrow rectangle below the letter field (it was pushing down the letters to further depth).

In this mod, the "h" is perfectly flush with the surface of the board (no puffing). The highest part of the puffed "k" is .001" from the surface of the board. I increased the depth of the ampersand to sit a little beyond the depth of both letters' top portions.

One thing that confuses me is the use of those two tabs at the top of each letter. It appears to me your intention is to trim off the top "waste" piece so the letters appear to be standing on their own. Is that correct? If so, perhaps you could eliminate those tabs and allow the tops of the letters to "blend" naturally to the waste portion which will be cut off anyway.

[DocWheeler]

You da man!

Still don't see how that affected the X and carve region.
And, it still does not tell me why the letter-size is wrong.

I'm going to get something to eat and think about this whole 2.004 thing!

Michael, Yes the top and sides are only for the machine.

Thanks for solving at least one of my problems; maybe I will now be able to play the piano;)