Version 3.0 Update

[Warren]

Hi Guys,

Firstly let me thank you both for inviting me to be part of the Beta Testing process.
I really enjoyed myself being involved in the development of this EXCELLENT software programme.
Please feel free to contact me again on any more upgrades. (I will be disappointed if you don't.)

I am sure you both deserve a good long holiday now, but I am also sure you are going to have little time for that in the near future.
Due to the fact that, during testing, we came accross new enhancements one by one. Now Vcarve Pro has been released, everyone is going to be hit with many new facilities and there are going to be numerous questions asked. I am sure all others involved in testing will help out where possible.

Best Regards, for now,
Warren.

PS. A little .jpg showing only a couple of the new facilities available with VCarve Pro.

[BSImages]

The attached sign was made with the some of the new text features of VCarve Pro3. It is 4 feet long and made of pine with a blue deck stain that was wiped off the surface but not in the v-grooves and sprayed clear lacquer finish. The new software is GREAT! It is user friendly and has fantastic new features. Good job Tony Brian and everyone who helped with this great software!
I made the sign for my favorite charitable organization (The Sonora Alano Club) as a way to hopefully help increase the number of people who pay the non-compulsory dues. The names below the sign are some of our dues paying members.

Bill Schober
Sonora, California

[Frxdy]

Thank you for the excellent upgrade. You've done a super job!

[dighsx]

Hey Brian (and I guess Tony) just wanted to thank you again for all the new features. I have been editing an eps file this morning and the new node editing stuff has saved me hours if not days. Being able to delete nodes seems like such a small thing but man can it save you a ton of work.

Thanks for all the hard work, everytime I delete a node I think of you slaving away Bri.

[doglaw]

I have to second that! Really, the new software is really great and it is so much fun!

Maybe someone can answer a question for me. I've been using Corel 12 to create my artwork and exporting to eps before bringing it in to Vcarve. I've noticed that even though I use the Shopbot Arc postprocessor, I'm not getting the CG commands as I would expect. So, I did a little experimenting and now I'm really confused.

I create a circle in Vcarve - produce a toolpath - I get CG codes. I create a circle in Corel - output .eps - produce a toolpath - I get M3's.
I create a circle in Vcarve - produce an .eps - import back into Vcarve - produce a toolpath - I get M3's.

I knew .ai files used to line segments to describe circles - but I thought .eps didn't.

Does anyone know of a way to overcome this?

[BrianM]

Hi Doglaw,

most software writing eps files will output arcs as bezier curves, and I believe that is waht Corel does. If you want to preserve the arcs it may be better to output as DXF (but you will probably have any bezier curves approximated by small straight line segments).


Regards

Brian

P.S Doglaw and Jay, thanks for the complements on V3, it's always nice to receive positive feedback

[Peter Stenabaugh]

I am using Corel X3, and I think it would work the same as Corel 12, but in some tests that I have done recently. I drew a circle in Corel and exported it to dxf and opened it with AutoCAD 2006. The resulting image can in as an elipse with the lines produced as arcs.

I also took a wmf file from corel, which is comprised of arcs and lines, as it is already vectorized. When I exported it as a dxf file and opened it with AutoCAD, there were NO arcs. There were straight lines and splines only. No circles, no arcs nada. The splines were all composed of short straight line segments, which may cut OK, depending upon the scale of the final project, but just so you are aware, most dxf files will not have the arcs you think they will. The upside of this is that Autocad will allow you to edit the splines and smooth them out, which will then give you arcs, but the lines will not be exactly as they were originally. The splines will be converted into tangent arcs, but they will shift slighty due to the creation of the arc. This may or may not work for your project, so be aware of this as well.

By the way, Autocad can export eps files but it cannot read them in, you need to bring grahics in as dxf files and fix them up and save them back off as eps if you are bringing them into vcarve.

If you draw the artwork in cad, then you will be ok (export as eps), but to bring artwork from corel, as a dxf file, you are most likely going to be very disappointed. I contend that your best option is eps, as Vectric has also mentioned.

I did also come across a weird thing with corel. Earlier on you may have seen the dragon that I carved out. This file was a scanned file brought into corel, and bitmap traced. I then saved the file as eps and brought it into Vcarve. Everything went really smooth and very fast, until I tried to process the file in vcarve, and it came up with tons of errors.

After much fussing aroung (for sake of the proper wording) I finally realized that Corel had given me 2 sets of line, one on top of the other. Once I knew this, it was only a matter of going around and picking and deleting one set of lines. After that a bit of clean up and vcarve performed perfectly.

Note also, that in doing this, I did not have any arcs at all. All short line segments.

Peter

[doglaw]

Peter

Thanks for the insight. Most of what I export from Corel machines great - except circles for the most part. They come out looking like the machine is doing the jitter-bug while cutting. So, since I like nice smooth lines - I import my vector from Corel - use it as a guide to recreate a new vector in vcarve. All in all - it doesn't work too bad - just takes a little more time.

By the way, you're right about Corel producing duplicate lines. I've have just disciplined myself to using the 'Select duplicate lines' menu option in Vcarve to get rid of them before doing anything else with the vectors.

Doug

[Peter Stenabaugh]

Doug:

I mislead you in the last post. After I talked about the ability to smooth splines, I went into AutoCAD and checked it out again. If you have a real spline, drawn as such, or imported from Corel, you CANNOT smooth it out by using the 'Splinedit' command. I was mistaken on this.

You can however smooth out splines, if they are drawn as a polyline, however as I mentioned when you do that the tangents produced, force you lines to move, because depening on whether you 'fit' the spline, or 'smooth' the spline, autocad does it differently. In one case the nodes will be at the tangent points, the other case they are not. Either way, the geometry changes, but if it is not important, then maybe that is an option to try.

I havent tried it lately, but Corel used to take text, that was created in corel, and export it to autocad. When you opened up the file in autocad, all the text was rendered into polylines, that were smooth and tangent to each other. It was really sweet, but I havent tried it lately. Now with Vcarve pro there is no need to do that, unless you want some weird font for a special purpose, then it would worth trying. However, since autocad will also do any font that is in windows, you can just do the text in autocad as well, sometimes it is easier, and export as eps into vcarve.

At least there are some options.

Now if only someone would come up with some single line, smooth tangent fonts that we can use for sign carving, that are cheap, or even free would be cool. Autocad has some single line fonts, but they are not arcs, only straight line segments. It works not bad if your carved text is not too large. If you need to do this, use the RomanS text. It is still straight line segments, but they are short, and the result looks not too bad.

Hope this helps.