Any Tinkercad gurus out there?

[dwardio]

I have a design in tinkercad that I’ve exported as an SVG. However, the SVG file is empty – not the usual stroke-width issue – I mean EMPTY. Devoid of content as shown here:

<?xml version="1.0" standalone="no"?>
<!DOCTYPE svg PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD SVG 1.1//EN"
  "http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/1.1/DTD/svg11.dtd">
<svg width="NaNmm" height="NaNmm" viewBox="NaN NaN NaN NaN" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1">
    <title>svgOutput</title>
    <desc>made with tinkercad</desc>
<path d="z" fill="none" stroke="rgb(255,0,0)" stroke-width="0.001mm" />
</svg>

I’ve made sure to <D>rop all elements and have verified that none of them extend into the -Z realm.
I’ve tried selecting the specific elements and exporting all – same result. Exporting it as an STL file works perfectly, but I need to lasercut these pieces, not 3D print them.
I then tried importing the STL into a blank project then exported as an SVG with the same result.

Here’s a link to the file: 3D design Brilliant Gogo-Maimu | Tinkercad (You have to have a Autocad/Tinkercad account (free or paid) to access the file.)

What on earth am I doing wrong? I’ve successfully exported SVGs in the past, but this has me stumped.

[tjones]

Sometimes I read things on here and I think “Hey…that guy apparently got his font stuck in Wingdings or something.”
::scratches head::

[shpl]

I just did a little test, been a while since I’ve used tinkercad for an SVG.
it looks like no matter what your view orientation is, it captures the “image” from the TOP view. So make sure to orient what you want so that it looks right when viewed from the top view.
I opened it in the viewer and it didn’t look like anything, but brought it into inkscape and realized it had a really thin stroke line so I set it to .1mm so I could see what it captured.
I hope that helps!

[bwente]

I can’t edit the one you shared. I was trying to make it thicker.

When exporting this type from Tinkercad, the 2D vectors are generated where the 3D model intersects the default workplane location.

[dwardio]

@bwente

I can’t edit the one you shared. I was trying to make it thicker.

Strange. As long as one has a Tinkercad/Autocad account (even a free one), it should be editable.

@bwente

the 2D vectors are generated where the 3D model intersects the default workplane location.

Absolutely. In this case, the 3D model has been dropped to the workplane, and shows an elevation of 0.00 mm. ¯\(ツ)/¯

[bwente]

Weird, I could not resize it before.

[dwardio]

Well, that’s just weird. I “resolved” the problem by switching from my Win11 box to my old MBP, thickening the part from 0.25 to 3.0 mm, and exporting. Switched back to my Win11 box, did the same, and the export worked perfectly.

Assuming there’s a minimum thickness required for a part to be exported, but can’t find any documentation that mentions this… ¯\(ツ)/¯

Thanks for your help!

[bwente]

https://tinkercad.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360034615794

[eflyguy]

Yeah, but his file (the snippet in the first post) was truly empty. It defined the hairline line thickness, but no design elements were included.

[bwente]

Right. My interpretation of the the help guide, is that the svg is whatever shape intersects the XY plane. I think the design was too thin. I just made it 20mm think and moved -3mm on the Z.

For example if you rotate the object you just get the slice.

[dwardio]

@dwardio

Assuming there’s a minimum thickness required for a part to be exported, but can’t find any documentation that mentions this…

Did some iterative testing and determined that the minimum thickness of a object that is flat / orthogonal to the workplane to be exported as an SVG is 0.50 mm.