Newbie question

[JimStaley]

I can't figure out how to carve and leave an object in relief. For instance, imagine two circles concentric about the midpoint. How do I carve away the inside of the smaller circle and the outside of the larger circle all the way to the edges of the board to leave a ring in relief?

Also, how do I carve an object from the library so that stands in relief and the rest of the board is carved away?

[cajunpen]

I think that you would place your desired image on the board. Then you would select the square or circle shape from the tool bar and place the selected shape around your object, centering it on your carving. Then you select the region button and that should do it for you.

I am still waiting from my machine, so the information I am providing is just what I learned playing with then software.

Good luck,

Bill

[JimStaley]

Thanks. That solves my 2nd problem, but I still can't carve the ring. When I try to draw the square around my square board and carve, it carves away the area between the outer circle and the inner one too.

[yenne]

What you're looking for is probably clipping. Clipping allows you to clip a pattern's (or region's) drawing area to any location that the previously listed carvings either do (inclusive clip) or do not (exclusive clip) carve. The attached project demonstrates this.

The inner circle is not clipped. It renders normally at 1/4" depth. The outer circle is a region with a 0" depth, which normally would merge and destroy the inner circle. However, I set its clipping to exclusive, so it carves only where the inner circle does not. Then the outer rectangle is set to 1/4" depth. I set the outer rectangle to clip exclusively as well, causing it to carve only where the inner and outer circles do not carve.

Two issues: first, I found a bug in clipping while writing the attached project. It *should* clip in carving order, according to the carving list, but the sort function is not working correctly. This will be fixed in the next release, which means that you'd have to re-order Circle2 and Rectangle1 to get the desired effect. Second, future versions of the Designer will have better drawing tools to achieve this kind of effect without hacking around with pattern clipping.

cheers,