I have the same font software and even upgraded to Scanfont as per your recommendation a couple years ago. My biggest issue is I can create the font and open it in other software and enlarge it to fill the page without issue, but in Designer I can often only make them real small - we're talking less than an inch square - if I drag it any larger, Designer fails to show the font on the screen. As far as the image I just posted, I was very aware it would not be suitable for a font as is and decided it was much quicker to just manually trace the vectors in designer as in the attached picture, and it worked well. I do not think the 2D drawing tools would have helped much short of it's ability to import an image directly as opposed to placing the image on a custom wood.
Anyway, I will be eager for your report on vector groups because I know we're both trying to do pretty much the same thing. If it doesn't work for you I'll get back to you for help with the font software.