Depth/height relationship in Designer

[pkunk]

Here ya go HTM. Post your instructions and excellent commentary. :ccol:

[HandTurnedMaple]

Here is a compilation of my posts on the subject (slightly edited). Anyone else with a conflicting or different experience please add to this.

Its a relation thing (I'm 96.743% sure). 100 = 0-.250". If you increase the depth to .5 then 100 will result in .250" being the top of the carved area and .500" being the bottom. Height of 200 with a .500" depth = .000" top of carving and .500" being the bottom; Height 150 = .125-.500".

Here is a list I use to allow carving the full depth (.000"-depth):

Depth Height
.125" 50
.250" 100
.375" 150
.500" 200
.625" 250
.750" 300

I suppose you could say increase the Height by 50 for every 1/8" (.125") you increase the depth. Or you could just cheat and always set your heights to 999. If you overset your height there is no problems that I have found.

These numbers are not set in stone however. All of my handmade patterns follow the chart. But my VA3D elk can gain as much as height=500 on a .500" depth.

If you have concerns, use Rotate Tool to look down the surface of the board and judge that way.

Another to approach is to increase height the same % you increase the depth. .375 is 150% of .250, so increase the height by 150%. If I set depth to .500, I would start with height 200. That keeps the top of the carving near the original surface of the board.

[Azbear]

Thanks HTM. After trying to get this project completed in a hurry, frustration set in and used up my "slow down and think mode". I need more ram.

One thing I have to say is, one can really appreciate the teachings from the Senoir Members of this forum by the skill progression of the students.

Thanks again Senoir Members !!

[Northwoods Woodcrafter]

Hmmmm...

I was thinking earlier today about this. Good to see some explanation.

BTW... Wasn't mixing two units of measure the reason that the Mars Climate Orbiter burned up in 1999?

heheh...

Pete

[HandTurnedMaple]

That's what happens when one person rounds to .001 and another rounds to .000001.

[cycollins]

In my experience doing two sided projects that need to have accurate height-to-real-world correspondence, I tried a fair number of experiments. I came to a wierder conclusion.

Every pattern has what I call a "natural scale". I don't know where it comes from, but it's the real-world dimnsions you get when you plop down the pattern initially on the board. That is, when you plop it on a board that isn't so constrained in either dimension that the pattern get's scaled down to accomodate it. Anyway, I tried to figure out how the "natural scale" was derived. Foolishly, I thought it might be the pixel width/height divided by the image resolution in DPI. It isn't. Anyway, you can determine it by simply doing the "plop" test, which is placing the pattern on a large virtual work piece and reading back the height and widht in inches. Record one the dimensions. A height of 100 will be equal to .25" when the pattern is left in its "natural scale". If you scale it up, the meaning of 100 scales at the same rate. That is, if you double the size of the pattern, 100 means .5". If you scale it down by 50%, 100 means .125". Creepy, huh? But using this twisted logic, I have in fact been able to predict height values that correspond to the correct offsets from the depth to get the precise contours I want. If I'm wrong, I'd love for someone from CW to weigh in and correct me.

cycollins

[Greybeard]

cy - an interesting addition to my knowledge of the machine.
I have posted somewhere my own explanation of the relationship between the "100" height etc, what you have named the "natural" height of the pattern. I like that, a term I will adopt.
What I didn't realize was that scaling affects the depth at the same time, so thanks for pointing it out.
I suppose one might have guessed, but we all have these blind spots ;)

Regards
John

[cycollins]

If you scale the pattern in the software, the height is affected. If the CW machine scales it to fit a board or to keep it under the rollers, the height appears NOT to be affected. In one case, I forgot about the stay-under-the-roller margin of 3.5" on either side of the project, the CW scaled my project down and I ended up with a miniature of my carving in X and Y that greatly exaggerated in Z (relative to its new diminuative size). Many pitfalls await the unwary...

[cycollins]

As if it isn't complicated enough, there is one more proviso: in order for the rule I stated originally to hold, the pattern has to make full use of the 0-255 gray-scale color space. This happens to be true for all my custom patterns, because they are generated from 3D renderings and I force them to use the full range of values (in order to maximize the spatial resolution in Z). Drop a pattern that has this property down on the virtual board and it will initially be assigned a depth of .250" and a height of 100. This guarantees that a white pixel (value 255), will be at .25" of depth and a black pixel (value 0) will be at board surface level (depth = 0.0"). All the other values of gray will be somewhere between the surface and .25".

[liquidguitars]

As if it isn't complicated enough, there is one more proviso: in order for the rule I stated originally to hold, the pattern has to make full use of the 0-255 gray-scale color space. This happens to be true for all my custom patterns, because they are generated from 3D renderings and I force them to use the full range of values (in order to maximize the spatial resolution in Z). Drop a pattern that has this property down on the virtual board and it will initially be assigned a depth of .250" and a height of 100. This guarantees that a white pixel (value 255), will be at .25" of depth and a black pixel (value 0) will be at board surface level (depth = 0.0"). All the other values of gray will be somewhere between the surface and .25".

Cy- You could be called a heretic for this. As the world is flat. But welcome to the club 3D :)

also try rendering out PNG32's in you 3D program...
LG

[mikesmall]

HandTurnedmaple - Thank you so much for this great information. It's more helpful than i can say.

Thanks,

Mike