Getting the Outline of a Shape to do a Profile Cut

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WaltS
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Getting the Outline of a Shape to do a Profile Cut

Post by WaltS »

Say I have a shape made up of a lot of vectors that aren't all connected to each other and I want to get the outline of the entire shape to cut it out as a shape leaving the inside intact using a profile cut. The closest thing I found was the Vector Boundary tool and played with that for awhile with offsets and then trying to weld vectors together and snip other vectors out but that just wasn't going to get it done it seemed. Is there a simple way to do this that I'm missing or am I asking for too much? I'd say there are roughly 10 separate vectors that would need to be connected to each other in order to form a continuous outline vector of the shape. Attached is just an image I grabbed as an example. Say I wanted to cut out the fish as a whole and the black parts are 4 separate vectors. Of course my shape is more complex than the fish example.
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fish.jpg
fish.jpg (3.66 KiB) Viewed 2048 times

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JamesB
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Re: Getting the Outline of a Shape to do a Profile Cut

Post by JamesB »

You can try selecting all your vectors and offset them outwards by an amount large enough to make the vectors join. Then you can offset that back in by the same amount or slightly less to leave a border. This may result in some rounding on corners though.

Cheers,
James

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scottp55
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Re: Getting the Outline of a Shape to do a Profile Cut

Post by scottp55 »

Manually tracing it is the best way I think, but if you're lazy and want to do a down and dirty...
Bitmap trace/nudge pieces until they overlap/snip.
I'm sure there are other better ways, but just played with it in between chores.
Needs node editing. Looks like an ugly shark drawn by a 5 yr old instead of a goldfish:)
scott
Have to try Jame's way:)
Attachments
fish bmt.jpg
fish nudged to overlap.jpg
fish trimmed with snip tool.jpg
fish.crv
(28.5 KiB) Downloaded 87 times
I've learned my lesson well. You can't please everyone,so you have to please yourself
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WaltS
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Re: Getting the Outline of a Shape to do a Profile Cut

Post by WaltS »

James, thanks for popping in with that suggestion. It sounds promising and I will give it a try. Much appreciated.

LOL @ Scott. It looks pretty good to me. I'm not sure that will work on my image but it's all worth a try. I'm not ruining any wood yet. Also, I sent you a PM over on the SB forum, couldn't figure how to do that here. Can't even find a way to see someone's profile here. :?

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WaltS
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Re: Getting the Outline of a Shape to do a Profile Cut

Post by WaltS »

James, thank you so much, that worked like a charm. Only had a few places that didn't connect right due to all the lines in my image, but I was able to node edit them and get everything connected and cleaned up in the amount of time from my last post to this. Thank you!

MarkJohnston
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Re: Getting the Outline of a Shape to do a Profile Cut

Post by MarkJohnston »

That pretty slick way James.

As a side note working with the vectors (node editing) is a must to achieve the best on a lot of projects.

Vectric has 4 or 5 Five minute videos on note editing that are great.

IMHO
Mark

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Re: Getting the Outline of a Shape to do a Profile Cut

Post by scottp55 »

The little short ones are "Tips and Tricks" and are great!
http://support.vectric.com/tips-and-tricks/select.php
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WaltS
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Re: Getting the Outline of a Shape to do a Profile Cut

Post by WaltS »

Yeah, I watched some of the short node editing ones yesterday. Very helpful. I actually feel like I know what I'm doing sometimes. :mrgreen:

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martin54
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Re: Getting the Outline of a Shape to do a Profile Cut

Post by martin54 »

WaltS wrote:Yeah, I watched some of the short node editing ones yesterday. Very helpful. I actually feel like I know what I'm doing sometimes. :mrgreen:
Node editing is really something that everyone should spend some time learning to do, video tutorials help but it is one of those things that only practice will really help with, there isn't a program on the market that will do a perfect trace every time.
There are a lot of things that you can do to help improve the auto trace results especially if you are using images downloaded from the internet but if you learn to draw & node edit properly then often it is quicker to just start from scratch & draw what you want rather than muck about auto tracing & then trying to clean up.

A lot will also depend on what your doing & what sort of quality you are prepared to accept, I can show a customer quickly what something might look like using a very dirty image which I would never cut from but this saves me the time & effort required in cleaning something up for the customer to then turn round & say it's not really what they expected & could I do something else :lol: :lol: :lol:

If you are making stuff to sell then I would say it is a key skill you really should take the time to learn, if your just a hobbyist making stuff because thats what you enjoy then you may decide that things don't really need to be perfect :lol: :lol: :lol:

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Re: Getting the Outline of a Shape to do a Profile Cut

Post by FixitMike »

Whenever I do a bitmap trace, I then apply the Fit Curves to Vectors (Bezier Curves) tool to reduce the number of nodes.
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Re: Getting the Outline of a Shape to do a Profile Cut

Post by Frunple »

Another way would be to copy all the vectors to another layer, then cut/delete all needed to leave just the outside, join them so you have you profile, then offset as needed.

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