converting handdrawn images

[RTB]

what is the best, most common way of taking a hand drawn image and converting it into a usable file in Vcarve pro?

[Kru82]

From using some of my own personal drawings . The cleaner and crisper lines the better and less to fix later on .

[RTB]

Thanks, how do you add your drawings to a file? So far, all I've tried is taking a picture and using auto bitmap trace on the jpg. It creates a tool path for both the inside and outside of the lines in the image. I have not found a good way to get rid of this. I have tried manual tracing but I must be missing something there as well.

[Adrian]

Manual tracing is by far the best way of doing it. This tutorial covers that - http://support.vectric.com/tutorials/V8 ... _DRAW.html

This one covers the auto trace but also covers tidying things up - http://support.vectric.com/tutorials/V8 ... _DRAW.html

[martin54]

Can you post a picture of what you are trying to do? It is often easier for the experts to help us if they can see what we want to achieve. The auto trace (bitmap trace) will produce vectors for you to be able to create toolpaths. Once that process has been completed then you can do what ever you want with those vectors, edit them to try & clean things up a bit, delete them, move them about, resize them etc etc.
Always a good idea to take a bit of time to learn to draw manually with practice it is often often quicker than using the auto trace & then cleaning up the resulting vectors.

[TReischl]

The problem with taking pictures is that it is difficult to get the camera aimed perfectly perpendicular to the drawing. What I do is use the scanner on my printer.

As Adrian said, manually tracing out the vectors is absolutely the best method. Autotrace is best reserved for quick and dirty jobs where the quality is not paramount. Problem is, I even do the q&d jobs manually cause I have this wonderfully precise machine that I cannot stand to watch make less than precise parts.

[RTB]

A lot of good info, thank you all. I tried your suggestions and they were spot on. Now, as they say, all I have to do is do it! Practice, practice. But really, I was told the forum was the place to go and they were not kidding.

[Art Mann]

I have to differ a little with Adrian. I have used the Vcarve auto trace feature enough that I am good with it and find it very useful. I have acquired some complex jpg designs that would require many hours to manually trace but I got the job done in less than an hour. You can't stop the function from finding inside and outside lines because the program has no way of knowing whether that line of pixels is simply a line or a very skinny shape. The duplicate traces are very easy to delete in most cases.

[RTB]

Much appreciated. I was thinking that very thing. Manual drawing is great for simple images but what was I going to do with highly detailed sketches? I would be very interested in learning what you're doing to deal with the double lines or get directed to a good info source.

Thanks again

[Adrian]

With the double lines it's just a matter of using the same tools that you would use for manual tracing to remove and edit them as appropriate. A lot depends on your final toolpath. Most complex drawings end up being vcarved in which case you need the double lines for the toolpath to work.