symmetrical hart shape in vectric v carve pro

[cockneyrebel]

hi i wounder if someone can help me please.i am trying to cut a perfect hart shape out. every time i try and cut one out come out not very good at all,i am using v carve pro to trace bitmap the out line but it never traces perfect am i doing something wrong ? many thanks for your help

[Bazzer]

Hi, if you upload the bitmap I will try it in vcarve also to give you a comparison if you want

[dazza]

i dont know anthing about v carve but for better results can you not just draw a vector line around half of it and then mirror that vector left or right then sellect all.. save vector.

[Bazzer]

Try this vcarve file

[magicniner]

A hart will only be symetrical if viewed from directly in front, above or behind and then only if it's standing straight and has no, or perfect antlers and doesn't have Wun Hung Low ;-)
ATB,
Nick

[Neale]

...and how many "ems" in symmetrical? But it's unfortunate when there is a typo in a thread title purely because it won't be picked up in a search at some later date.

I needed to draw a heart shape recently to use with vCarve and I found it more difficult than I expected. I think I ended up using a vector graphics application so I could tweak the curve, then mirrored it.

[magicniner]

I'd have included more typos for you if I thought you'd have found it funnier but one near the beginning seemed enough along with a smiley to ensure that anyone reading with a sense of humour would take it in the spirit in which it was offered.
Again - :-)

[Neale]

Too many funnies and not enough smilies! And that is meant as a kind of compliment and nothing else. Very difficult to convey humour on a forum like this, or even say anything that has no chance of misinterpretation. So, my apologies for not spotting a deliberate funny.

As for sense of humour - how about, "I went for a job as a lathe operator once. They turned me down". Well, OK, maybe that one doesn't prove anything...

Going back to the original question - I've never had much success tracing bitmaps with software. Probably a mix of incompetence and inexperience, as it's not something I need to do very often, but as long as the shape isn't too complicated I've usually managed to import a bitmap and then draw and edit curves over it, possibly even as a series of short straight lines. Might be an alternative approach for a quick-and-dirty solution especially in wood where a quick run round with a bit of sandpaper takes out any lumps and bumps.

[GEOFFREY]

I have posted here a couple of times asking if any is aware a good quality raster to vector converter, but have cometo the conclusion that there probably isn't one!!! I usually end up photo-copying the image as large as possible onto a piece of "clear" tracing paper (or some printable acetate that my wife uses) selotaping that onto the screen and using the line tool just keep clicking every couple of mm round the image (yes symmetrical sections get mirrored). I then convert the lines to splines, edit the splines to get the shape I want and then covet the splines back to lines (I can't put cutter paths on splines). G.

[magicniner]

As for sense of humour - how about, "I went for a job as a lathe operator once. They turned me down".


It's good, I like it!

As for bitmap to structured drawing I've found that most "trace" routines give less than perfect results unless the resolution is increased massively and then processed, then manually edited, and you still get over-complicated geometry. I suspect it's far better to use a CAD package which allows you to have the processed image in the background and construct your own geometry - a capability which came into consideration when adding Bob Art in my initial BobCadCam order,
Regards,
Nick

[Neale]

...and with Bezier curves so you can tweak points and directions, you can do reasonably well. I must take a look at some software my wife uses to convert bitmap drawings into vectors which then get digitised for a computer sewing machine. It seems to do better than things like Adobe Illustrator.

[cockneyrebel]

Hi Bazzer here it is thanks for having a look11691

[Bazzer]

Hope this helps, in trace bitmap I used following options
1. Black/white
2. corner fit 43%
3. noise filter 10
4. bitmap fading none
5. apply

seemed to come out ok, I'm not always so lucky :cheerful:

[cockneyrebel]

hi thanks for having a look for me i have to try in my program as when i try ed to open your saved file it can up that yours it a later version than mine :-( i will try the setting thank you

[Bazzer]

I've saved 2 files to dxf, heart1 is a single vector, heart2 is the bitmap tracing of your image.
cross fingers :)

[alboy]

I do a lot of bitmap tracing and the only way I can get a nice clean result is to either use the trace command and then node edit the resulting vectors or manually draw over a background image, drawing and tracing with vectors is nothing like drawing with a pencil, takes loads of practice.