Analysis of the Depth and Height pparameters in the Designer software

[darrelu]

I did an expperiment to analyze the nature and interactions of the depth (D) and height (H) parameters in the Designer software. I did the following experiment. I carved a series of capital letter "I"s at various D and H settings. I then measured the maximum depth and height of the resulting carvings and analyzed the data in Microsoft EXCEL. I used the following parameter sets: D= 0.050", 0.125" and 0.500". I varied H between 0 and 999. I found the following:

The maximum depth of the carving varied linearly with the value of D and was accurate within 10%. My machine appeared to carve these letters somewhat shallower than the set value.

The amount of relief in the carving produced by a given value of H was nonlinear with H and also with D. For values of D = 0.050", 0.125" and 0.500", 80% of the effect of H occurred before H = 50, 200 and 400 respectively. The increase in relief seemed roughly linear for H values up to these values. There was hardly any further increase in relief for H values more than 100, 200 and 500 for the above D values repectively. All data for the shallow carvings had significant error so this data needed to be interpreted cautiously. This experiment shows that changing H will not appear to have much of an effect on the relief in shallow carvings until very small values of H are used, but H will have a pronounced effect on deeper carvings that is easy to observe. The bottom line is that if the maximum depth of the carving is .5", values of H > 500 will make little difference and for shallow carvings less than 0.1", values of H > 150 won't make much difference.

I tried to attach the EXCEL analysis file to this posting, but that is not one of the allowed file formats. If anyone wants to see the data, send me an email and I will send the file.

Darrel Untereker
duntereker@msn.com

[Jeff_Birt]

Darrel, While investigating how pattern files are made up I went through a similar process as you. My results are here: http://www.allcw.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?p=835&sid=c096212ac40318dae4d0c70497cb1467#835

The depth of a given point on a relief carving (pattern) is dependant on the setting of depth, height and the level of grey. See the above link for the formula.

I did not use text as you did, which brings up an interesting thought. Designer may 'assign' a 'level of grey' to text. You may be able to solve for the level of grey assigned using your data and the formula linked above.

[darrelu]

Jeff:

I chose text and in partiucular the letter I for my experiment to simplify the situation. I wanted to carve things that were either high or low relief features. I thought this would simplify the situation in two ways. One is that there would be little "grey" to deal with and the other was that I would have an easier time deciding just where to make the measurements, and thus have more accurate data. I have not been able to decide just how Designer interprets grey, but maybe I will understand that after I go to your link. Thanks.

Darrel

[pkunk]

I tried to attach the EXCEL analysis file to this posting, but that is not one of the allowed file formats.
Print it as a PDF and post that.