Exercising the trace feature - 3D model from a 2D drawing

As a not-artist, the trace feature was not something I initially thought I would use very much. But vector art is not exactly in my wheelhouse at the moment either (working on it!). Last night I got a taste of how cool Trace will be for my development process.

I sketched this up on paper with a pencil (using my handy :glowforge: ruler to make sure I was roughly mirroring the shape) and dropped it into the bed to trace. I had to darken a few lines and repeat the trace several times until I got a continuous shape with no breaks, but it looked pretty clean to me. I found that the :glowforge: kerf is so small that it actually took my line drawing and cut on both the inside and the outside of my lines! (Showoff!)

The double line cut is not necessarily what I will be going for once I cut this out in some nice hardwood, but for development I can live with it. Plus I get a cool, hand drawn look to the cutout. Anyway, here’s my toy rocket prototype in cardboard!

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You absolutely win with coolest project for the day, no matter what else we see :smiley:

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Nice job with the hand-drawn prototyping, don’t need no fancy software!
… and I love your little astronaut!

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That is the neatest design I’ve seen in a while – well done!

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really cool to see this happen!

I used to draw projects like this and cut them and glue them together. My drawing skills have not evolved as much but I do great things in illustrator and I’m looking forward to this!

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That is REALLY cool and super cute! :grin:

Just a tip for the double cut lines - don’t click directly on the line when you use the Trace function in the Glowforge interface. Click either outside of the line on the white background, or inside of a cutout area.

Clicking directly on the line itself will put a cutline on either side of the black line that is shown.

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You’re a considerably better artist than you think! You hand-drew pieces that fit together! It’d take me forever to figure that out in software!

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super cute!!! brings up many ideas::smiley::smiley::smiley:

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I love it! This is good enough to be in the Glowforge commercial!

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Cool, i love the little astronaut.

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That is way cool! And the hand drawn look really sells it more than a perfectly smooth soul-less computer drawn item.

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What a fun project and this is right up my alley with quick sketch ups of an idea!

Thanks for joining the community!

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Oh awesome, I’ll have to try that out!

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Thanks for the love everyone!

It’s kind of easier to draw stuff that fits together on paper than on the computer, especially if you have a scrap of the material you are going to use.

I’ll keep updating with some project photos as this goes on. I’d love to add some engraves to this and make it robust enough to stand up to a couple of toddlers, not sure what material that will require >_<

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I’d recommend this, in the case of toddlers :slight_smile:

https://www.google.com/amp/www.popularmechanics.com/technology/news/amp13919/new-steel-alloy-titanium/

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Love this!

Oh. That’s unobtanium! :slight_smile:

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Yes!

maybe @dan can add some good toddler-proof material to the :proofgrade: library :wink:

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So awesome!

To avoid the double lines, click the white - not the black. It cuts out what you click, so cutting out a black line means tiny thin cuts.

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Awesome project. ‘Not-artist’ or not…

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