Nautical Compass Floor Medallion

[Auslander]

I am trying to create a nautical compass (see attached MPC) as a floor medallion for my home. Each piece will have to be cut individually even though my design looks like one piece. As far as I can tell, I cannot use the carve path function as it naturally removes material from the pattern. Does anyone know how to divide this pattern into individual pieces? I have spent a lot of time on the design trying to achieve the highest accuracy possible (in angles and lengths). Even small discrepancies may cause large problems once everything is assembled into the medallion.

Another side question is that this pattern (6" in diameter) is a 1:5 scale of the eventual medallion (30" in diameter). I will need to scale up the individual pieces one I get them separated out from the pattern.

If I can make this work then I will keep the machine. Please feel free to save and use this template; I believe in openly sharing, especially on a small forum like this one. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Michael in Dallas

[BobHill]

Michael,

I'm guessing that you aren't experienced in any vector programing such as CorelDraw, Xara, or Adobe Illustrator. In any of those programs you could easily create your compass (32points or digital) and then detail the individual parts for cutting in different woods, for instance. Once you have it made in a vector program as given above, you'd convert it into a raster (GIF, BMP, JPEG, PNG) and import that into Designer. In designer you would then do a vector trace of the individual parts and depending upon the end resulting size you wish the compass, make the four different size points (32point compass) and then tile those into your contrasting background pieces.

To do this from scratch in Designer can certainly be done, but I'd do some drafting type layout first to get the angles and component division lengths first.

Bob Hill
Tampa Florida

[Skyhawk]

Nice job on the compass, but I believe that you'll need to re-create this in another application such as Corel Draw to do what your looking to do...

Corel will allow you to create the entire compass as individual parts, and export them into designer individually...

On second thought, you may be able to set this to the size that you are looking for, and delete all of the parts except for the one that you'll be cutting...I would suggest saving the individual pieces separately (maybe prefaced with a number to help order them)

With only the one part left, upload it to the card and cut it out!

[BoardSilly]

I don't know how much time and effort you have to get everything worked out and pieced together, or if this is a 'one off' for you or not. Anyways, I don't know if you have seen the following or not:

http://www.czarfloors.com/item_details.asp?sku=PC3

For the price it would save a lot of time and effort.

[HighTechOkie]

This seems easy enough to redraw in Designer. Just draw up each piece as you would if you were laying out by hand instead of designing it as the finished assembled piece. To have the basic shape and rescale it for different projects. you should constrain the angles, that way you just enter one length to scale up or down.

There are 5 basic shapes with 4 requiring a mirror image. I had the inner portion done and then Designer froze on me . I think I will try and do up the design BoardSilly linked to. It doesn't increase the complexity, just the number of pieces, yet looks more impressive.

Rob

[BoardSilly]

Don't get me wrong, it's an easy project on a larger CNC. But with the CW with a max of 14", it could be more trouble for a 1 off then its worth.

[Auslander]

Thanks everyone; I am still working through the problem (not a problem as much as it is a learning experience). I have attached the CorelDraw file, thanks to a free 15 day trial from Corel. I still haven't been able to figure out how to remove the innermost circle so that it does not intersect the N-S-E-W axes. It might have something to do with replacing the circle with a set of arcs but I haven't been able to get it working yet. I also haven't yet tried to tackle breaking the object up into pieces (I have no clue how to do this).

I agree with most of you that this really shouldn't be that hard and that there are only a few shapes. I think that I've had enough for today but I will try again tomorrow, especially if there are other suggestions. It might be a good idea to sit down and figure out the angles and try to make the pieces individually. I'm not worried about the straight pieces; cutting the rounded pieces is the hard part.

Those people from Czar flooring are unreal though. I can't even imagine how they make some of the art that they are selling as flooring. There's just a certain sense of pride in having done it yourself and it being a hobby. You guys have been very helpful and I appreciate all of the suggestions.

[Gman_Ind]

I know its not any help now but when the new software for the carvewright is released it is supposed to import DXF, so it would be a short project using CAD to layout each piece with perfect accuracy. I have a Delrin gear i make on CNC from a DXF import that i would like to run on my machine instead of burrowing a $100,000 machine.

[Dennis Perry]

Michael here ya go. Is in Corel X3 You will see bitmaps and vectors of each piece.

Dennis


Nautical Compass 3.zip

[rgant05]

Wow, Meat
Talk about been there... done that. I think that is exactly what he was asking about.... or did you do this for his request??? I might even give that a try.