A little help with a sign.....

[jmoriearty]

I'm trying to make a sign for a wedding gift, but I have a few questions. I normally only do small vector signs to use up scraps, so now I have to learn a bit more. I started this carve once and stopped it because I had messed up on the height of the lettering and the hearts looked like crap. The central portion of the lettering came out fantastic, but I had inadvertantly left the height of the Established wording at 100....way too high for small lettering. I have dropped it to 25, I hope that fixes it. The hearts, however, look like crap no matter what I do. I know it's because the original clip art was not thick enough on the lines, but it's all I could find to work with. Any thoughts or suggestions? Possibly some improvements on the text heights? I'll welcome any advice out there.

Graham Sign.mpc

[fwharris]

On the hearts I set the depth to match your carve region (.250), bit opt @ best and added medium draft. The height on this one is at 50. These help compensate for a possible low resolution pattern.

One the other text I also set them to the same depth as the carve region. For "established" I increased the text spacing to 24 (done in the text edition box), added draft and lowered the height to 75. The height could possibly go lower if needed. The other text I also added draft..

[jmoriearty]

I wish that I could see what you did....lol. Unfortunately, I haven't done the software upgrade yet. I will make those changes and see if it helps...thanks!

[fwharris]

I wish that I could see what you did....lol. Unfortunately, I haven't done the software upgrade yet. I will make those changes and see if it helps...thanks!

updates were done in 1.187,,,,

[jmoriearty]

I wish my software knew that....lol. It's been doing that to me constantly. I may need to reinstall it. I made the changes you suggested and it came out MASTERFULLY!!!! Thank you sir, you are a genius. I never knew that the draft could do so much for low resolution.

[jmoriearty]

The draft even significantly reduced the carve time on the piece. Thank you very much! I definitely owe you one!

[aokweld101]

I would also think of using the feather of a 1/4..

[fwharris]

I wish my software knew that....lol. It's been doing that to me constantly. I may need to reinstall it. I made the changes you suggested and it came out MASTERFULLY!!!! Thank you sir, you are a genius. I never knew that the draft could do so much for low resolution.

Glad the settings helped out and no not a genius but thanks! Drafts works most of the time for very narrow lines like in the hearts so it will carve better. Sometimes though it will distort and give you some strange looking designs.