HELP! I am going crazy here - I have prepared a drawing to be laser-cut, I am exporting a dxf format. My laser guy tells me that my shapes are not all connected i.e. the laser starts and stops when cutting a shape rather than doing straight cutting. He says I need to Join the pieces - so first of all when I look at the bitmap I don't see any gaps, no matter how much I enlarge it. Also there is no "Join" option - only joining nodes, but there are hundreds of them and also joining consecutive nodes changes the shape. So I am totally lost! I export the drawing to a dxf format and then look at it using a dxf viewer and still I don't see any gaps. What to do? Where to look for answers?
Thanks in advance to anyone who can help!
additional info/question:
Note: When exporting a .dxf from Inkscape we get 2 options: - use ROBO-Master type of spline output - use LWPOLYLINE type of line output
We can select none, either one or both - a total of 4 different options. Does this have anything to with this problem?
I do not work with laser cutters, but I use the dxf format for my Silhouette cutting machine as I have not invested in the software-license that could read svg files. To my experience when opening dxf files in Inkscape all line segments are separated for any combination of ROBO or LWPOLYLINE, but when I open this in the Silhouette software the lines are joined. So different software differ in how they interpret the DXF files.
I would guess you could combine the paths in Inkscape (fx by this method which usually work for me when I forget to keep an svg file https://inkscape.org/forums/beyond/dxf-selecting-paths/#c21234) But when saving as DXF maybe they will split up again, depending on how the laser cutting software interpret the files.
Hope others have better help for you. Sure svg is not an option for the laser cutter? Or g-code?
I doubt this will help you, but here is what I experienced when exporting the different DXF options and importing to Silhouette Studio.
Wow that was quick - thanks a lot! I am trying it now - I wish there was some way for me to see the difference when I perform these steps - I did them - but the result both in Inkscape and in the free dxf viewer I am using look exactly the same! It's frustrating to hear that there are many ways to view/interpret a dxf file - in my opinion this situation should simply not exist...! Perhaps someone here has seen this problem before - perhaps there is some way to see something in Inkscape which will tell you if you got it right? And there's also the big mystery - to me - of the options that come up when you create a dxf here - I learnt that the 2 options regarding the line/spline mumbo-jumbo should be left unchecked or you get into trouble...!
My problem is I don't have any experience/access in this whole area and I am using a guy who is a bit difficult to communicate with, to put it mildly. He is using some software that came with his laser cutting machine - which I don't have access to. He reads the file and tells me something about the paths not joined - he can join them himself on his software and he quickly showed me a pattern that when it is joined properly, his software shows just one "node" for the pattern instead of several/many on the file I gave him. Problem is, it takes him an extra time to do this, which will cost me. So I will keep on giving him new versions until we get it right...
Using Inkscape with Cutters/Plotters laser cutting
Inkscape.org
HELP! I am going crazy here - I have prepared a drawing to be laser-cut, I am exporting a dxf format. My laser guy tells me that my shapes are not all connected i.e. the laser starts and stops when cutting a shape rather than doing straight cutting. He says I need to Join the pieces - so first of all when I look at the bitmap I don't see any gaps, no matter how much I enlarge it. Also there is no "Join" option - only joining nodes, but there are hundreds of them and also joining consecutive nodes changes the shape. So I am totally lost! I export the drawing to a dxf format and then look at it using a dxf viewer and still I don't see any gaps. What to do? Where to look for answers?
Thanks in advance to anyone who can help!
additional info/question:
Note: When exporting a .dxf from Inkscape we get 2 options:
- use ROBO-Master type of spline output
- use LWPOLYLINE type of line output
We can select none, either one or both - a total of 4 different options. Does this have anything to with this problem?
I do not work with laser cutters, but I use the dxf format for my Silhouette cutting machine as I have not invested in the software-license that could read svg files. To my experience when opening dxf files in Inkscape all line segments are separated for any combination of ROBO or LWPOLYLINE, but when I open this in the Silhouette software the lines are joined. So different software differ in how they interpret the DXF files.
I would guess you could combine the paths in Inkscape (fx by this method which usually work for me when I forget to keep an svg file https://inkscape.org/forums/beyond/dxf-selecting-paths/#c21234) But when saving as DXF maybe they will split up again, depending on how the laser cutting software interpret the files.
Hope others have better help for you. Sure svg is not an option for the laser cutter? Or g-code?
I doubt this will help you, but here is what I experienced when exporting the different DXF options and importing to Silhouette Studio.
Wow that was quick - thanks a lot! I am trying it now - I wish there was some way for me to see the difference when I perform these steps - I did them - but the result both in Inkscape and in the free dxf viewer I am using look exactly the same! It's frustrating to hear that there are many ways to view/interpret a dxf file - in my opinion this situation should simply not exist...! Perhaps someone here has seen this problem before - perhaps there is some way to see something in Inkscape which will tell you if you got it right? And there's also the big mystery - to me - of the options that come up when you create a dxf here - I learnt that the 2 options regarding the line/spline mumbo-jumbo should be left unchecked or you get into trouble...!
My problem is I don't have any experience/access in this whole area and I am using a guy who is a bit difficult to communicate with, to put it mildly. He is using some software that came with his laser cutting machine - which I don't have access to. He reads the file and tells me something about the paths not joined - he can join them himself on his software and he quickly showed me a pattern that when it is joined properly, his software shows just one "node" for the pattern instead of several/many on the file I gave him. Problem is, it takes him an extra time to do this, which will cost me. So I will keep on giving him new versions until we get it right...
Thanks again!