The alignment issues when cutting a piece that has already been engraved is getting tedious. Can someone point me at a post about being able to combine .jpg( or other picture) engrave and the .svg cut file.
I’ve read the alignment post(s.) That’s not what I’m looking for.
I’m just looking at being able to load the two file types into the same job or loading them both into one file. It seems straightforward. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. -Joe
What software are you using to create SVGs?
I’m exporting vectors from Aspire 8.5. I use with my CNC router.
Maybe someone here can help with that software. The SVG will/can act as a container file for the JPG image so that the JPG and SVG vector information is contained in the same file.
Can you import JPG into that software?
@joe.balint you are not going to be able to do that in Aspire. Install Inkscape {free} and you can embed jpeg or other raster files there.
You can bring in jpegs and bitmaps to trace for vector generation or to convert into a model component. But when I select vectors to export as .svg, that’s all it selects, vectors.
I’ll take a look at that. Thanks.
I use vertic V-Carve from my CNC for design. Then export as SVG. I use Corel photo/paint to work with jpegs for engraves. Open SVG with Corel draw and import jpegs. Make sure cut lines are a different color. Save as SVG and move to glow forge ap. I have had no distortion of dimensions so far. It all makes for a steep learning curve but that is some of the fun.
As mentioned above, Inkscape does this very well, but with one caveat:
Don’t try to edit your imported embedded raster inside Inkscape except to scale it. Rotating rasters will get really funky results. It’s best to be sure your raster is 100% ready before importing.
In short: resizing good, rotating bad.
They seem to have fixed that bug yesterday.
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Right. Rotate in the ui maybe (haven’t tried), but rotating in inkscape went terribly for me. Caveat emptor!
You tried today? Didn’t work Sunday, works for me today in Inkscape without distorting the Bitmap as it did before.
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Re-read the announcement - Inkscape never had an issue, it was the GFUI import of rotated bitmaps with the SVG that was breaking. Along with the ability to rotate, it fixed that issue.
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Not sure if that was directed at his explanation or mine. But just in case.
No Inkscape was never the issue. There was an issue if you rotated a Bitmap within a 3rd party package like Inkscape and exported it as an SVG the UI would interpret it incorrectly and the resulting image would be blocky. I only have Inkscape to test but it just worked correctly for me. I was the person who originally reported the problem a year ago.
Also now we can rotate bitmaps in the UI which we couldn’t do before.
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Oops… meant to “reply to” evansd2…
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The issue, I believe, was in the transform SVG protocol, which presumably would affect both in-UI and design software rotation. The bandaid was to rerasterize in the design software so that no transform was applied.
Short version: we’re all correct here, there’s no one right way to do things.
Longer version:
Right, regardless of where the problem actually resided, it was just safer to do your rotations in your raster, and then import it into your SVG and not fool with it. It sounds like that might be changing now, but I’m locked in on my work flow: I do everything in external programs and will only translate (that is, move things around, no scaling, no rotating except MAYBE 90 degree increments of vectors) in the GF UI.
There is literally no way for GF to make an editor that can compete with dedicated raster and vector editors, they can barely get their promised core features to work with all the crazy edge cases we present to them. They’re a lean team, and there are entire hordes of people behind these editors – and it’s just not their business model.
So, expecting the UI to ever compete is just not realistic – or even necessary – especially when we can get such fine control with the Inkscapes and AIs of the world.
To anyone who thinks it should be “easier”… well there are always ways to make specific things easier, but if you’re trying to do something complex and innovative, the process will have a certain necessary complexity. Once you get over the learning curve in your preferred editor, it can be pretty simple to do the things we commonly do, it’s really worth the investment to learn the software, it’ll pay you back later.
I certainly don’t have all the answers, and I love hearing about people’s workflows. I learn new tricks and techniques all the time. I just now (yesterday) realized Inkscape has a deep ungroup feature… man I could have used that a few times!
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I didn’t mean to come across as confrontational and this isn’t a competition to prove who’s right - I was just pointing out to everyone that the issue was never in Inkscape, and that it was now (apparently) resolved.
I’ve learned a TON from your posts (and others) and am very grateful for this community!
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That Inkscape did the trick. and was extremely easy to implement following your caveats. Thanks!
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