What software can do this ?

Hi if this is in the wrong section admins please move. Ok whilst I have nearly built my small CNC machine just waiting on some steppers that seem to take forever ordering I thought I would like to ask a question for those that have tried the product and works. I would like to take a sketch of say for simplistic reason a Star and be able to convert it to a specified size and also to a DXF that the machine can cut. My skills at autocad are not good but I can draw so the easiest option for me is take a picture and make it into a DXF file is this possible? also how do I convert it to the size I want? Your expert help will be greatly appreciated.

Hi

Try Inkscape

I've only used it a few times to convert images to dxf files, so not that experienced with it but for free you cant go wrong !!

http://www.inkscape.org/

Google for inkscape tutorials, there are quite a few available.

Long term though it would be good to get used to using autocad or similar.

Vic

Hi Vic many thanks for that link I'll download it and have a play. Also if I was to draw an image ie with a pencil and paper and scan this and keep it as a j-peg can I convert this to a DXF file? is there a programme out there that can do this ? excuse what may sound like alot of dumb questions as I am on a learning curve and this is proving a real challenge as I don't know where else to go from here.

There are programs to convert a scanned image to dxf http://www.scan2cad.com/ but none that I know of for free.
You say your skills at Autocad are not good does this imply that you have Autocad?
If you do have it then it can import scanned drawings over which you can draw in cad.
Mind you in some respects I can sympathise with you as getting actual g-code from drawings is not all that easy!

peter

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Originally Posted by Kammo1

Hi Vic many thanks for that link I'll download it and have a play. Also if I was to draw an image ie with a pencil and paper and scan this and keep it as a j-peg can I convert this to a DXF file? is there a programme out there that can do this ? excuse what may sound like alot of dumb questions as I am on a learning curve and this is proving a real challenge as I don't know where else to go from here.

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If you load your scanned image into Inkscape it will convert it to a dxf file, there are some tutorials here http://inkscapedxf.blogspot.com/ one of which explains about converting to dxf.