Rotate entire drawing or?

[BearlyRich]

I was designing a box last night. All went well untill I realised that it was too large for the board I designed it on. I have a good stock of 11 inch shelving that I'm carving on to learn the machine...

So this design is now about 12 inches high, but only 10 inches wide. In Designer, I could find no way to rotate the entire design? I then changed the dimensions of the board to 15x11 instead of the original 11x15. This makes the drawing fit fine, but with a 15 inch high board. Of course the machine can't handle a 15 inch board...

Does anyone know what would happen if I tried carving this? Would the machine automatically rotate the design and board so it technically was carving on an 11x15 board and do the drawing sideways? Or would it force a rescale which would ruin the set dimensions?

Does anyone know if there is a way to rotate an antire design? It's two sided so doing all the parts manually is a real pain...

Thanks..

[BobHill]

Bearly,
Of your design won't fit the board you have in the machine, then it'll automatically call for a rescale, or it'll ask for another board. If the design is too large for the machine, then it'll tell you so in Designer, of course, and will also call for a rescale. It won't try to carve under those circumstances. However, have you considered doing the larger piece in two sections and joining them together perhaps with biscuits and glue?

Bob Hill
Tampa Florida

[BearlyRich]

Designer didn't complain about the new board dimensions. That's what prompted my question. The drawing is easily small enough for any board, being about 10x12. The problem was poor planning. The design wound up being too high, really 12x10, so it didn't fit my original board. It's only a problem because my stock is 'standard' 3/4 shelving at 11 inches wide.

Yes, I could make a 14 inch wide board, and even have to for another drawing. But this drawing will fit on my stock, IF it was rotated. But rotating all those elements is a major pain to get them back in the right places.

I'll have to try a test carve tomorrow night to see what it will do with the new dimension. There must be some reason why designer allowed the 15x10 board? If it decides it wants to scale it, it will let me know before the carving begins, I think? If so, then I'll have to go through the work of rearranging all the pieces to fit a properly sized board...

[Jon Jantz]

Glad you got it to work....

HOWEVER.... it is a major PITA that a person can't rotate all the elements of a design at the same time and everything stayed lined up exactly. I've run into that problem numerous times.

[Charles M]

I've run into that problem numerous times.

Me, too. I can rotate all of the elements but they stay in their relative locations instead of all moving around a central axis.

[BearlyRich]

Well, oddly enough, everyone here was absolutely right.

I got the chance to try the project in the machine tonight. It's only option was to resize the 15 inch high board to the 11 inch true board dimension. So the 15x11 didn't work...

One big lesson learned, plan the project!

Now maybe an updated software will allow rotating a complete drawing correctly... until then, I have to go back a rotate them all one by one and realign everything, on both sides of the board... Ah-well...

And come to think of it. The software should not allow a board dimension gretaer than the machine will allow...

Thanks...

[DDV]

Designer didn't complain about the new board dimensions. That's what prompted my question. The drawing is easily small enough for any board, being about 10x12. The problem was poor planning. The design wound up being too high, really 12x10, so it didn't fit my original board. It's only a problem because my stock is 'standard' 3/4 shelving at 11 inches wide.

Yes, I could make a 14 inch wide board, and even have to for another drawing. But this drawing will fit on my stock, IF it was rotated. But rotating all those elements is a major pain to get them back in the right places.

I'll have to try a test carve tomorrow night to see what it will do with the new dimension. There must be some reason why designer allowed the 15x10 board? If it decides it wants to scale it, it will let me know before the carving begins, I think? If so, then I'll have to go through the work of rearranging all the pieces to fit a properly sized board...

Maybe I'm missing something here. But, if you make a new board window 12 X 10, leave it active, open your 15" wide window, select all, copy, activate the 12 X 10 window, paste, aline horz. and aline vertical. Works for me.
DDV

[Gman_Ind]

I noticed a strangly similar situation trying to rotate centerline text. I put my shop name and email on the back of the carvings and it is upside down by default. I tried to use the easy button and rotate it 180 degress but each letter rotates not the phrase, It ends up the same as if I mirrored the text. If I rotate it 90 degrees it makes good vertical text.

[BearlyRich]

Copy & paste works, but no centering horizontal or vertical, as a group. With many elements, centering winds up putting everything in the center. That doesn't work... So it was copying each indivdual element, then re-placing on the new board one at a time in it's proper place.

As with a few other things, if multiple elements are grouped or selected together, the group should be centered, not the individual elements as it is done now... A minor pain, but at least it all worked. Luckily with the supplied measurments on the board, re-placement went very fast and I had the new board set up in maybe 10 minutes. Haven't had the chance to carve it yet though...

[HillBilly]

Darn it, just when I`d thought I`d made enough "sign`s" we`s got another request... LOL

Please, don`t get "trapped" within the box.

It`ll only do what ya ask it to.

[DDV]

Copy & paste works, but no centering horizontal or vertical, as a group. With many elements, centering winds up putting everything in the center. That doesn't work... So it was copying each indivdual element, then re-placing on the new board one at a time in it's proper place.

As with a few other things, if multiple elements are grouped or selected together, the group should be centered, not the individual elements as it is done now... A minor pain, but at least it all worked. Luckily with the supplied measurments on the board, re-placement went very fast and I had the new board set up in maybe 10 minutes. Haven't had the chance to carve it yet though...

Did you use the Align tool or the Center tool? Center tool I know won't work it just piles everything in the center of the board.
DDV

[BearlyRich]

I have used the Align tool, but mostly I center either vertically or horizontally. I didn't notice that Align has a center for a group and it works quite nicely. Thanks. It will help in the future...