I’m hoping to get someone with a glowforge to test cut a coaster for me and/or get some feedback on my design.
I’ve been putting off working on figuring out design stuff for lasers because I can’t get the feedback of testing it, but I finally decided to try one of the projects I have in mind so I can hopefully get some design done before my glowforge shows up. I’ve been collecting pictures of Japanese manhole covers over several years’ worth of trips and I’m hoping to make myself a personalized set of coasters like these ones . I finally made an effort to vectorize one - if I understand correctly, compound paths are ok as fills for engraves and strokes (like the outer circle on mine) are ok to differentiate from fills for cuts, so that’s how I set it up.
Would it also be reasonable to do a simple text engrave on the back - like the name of the city, date we visited, and maybe activity we did, or some of the things the city is known for that aren’t on the manhole cover?
edit: removed extraneous paths pointed out by @jbmanning5 (I think)
I think I’ve attached the .svg, but it’s my first time trying to upload a file in discourse.
If anyone is interested, this one is from Yokote. It’s one of my favorite manhole covers - with cherry blossoms, a castle, and a festival all together FWIW, here’s my original picture:
I see some errant paths that could be cleaned up - all of those little shapes that are perfect little straight lines? They look like trace errors to me.
The horizontal lines on the lower-right of the design are part of a much larger compound path and came through as black.
Are your screenshots in illustrator? I’m not sure how to get a list of paths like that, or which paths you’re pointing out as being trace errors. They’re all a single layer in my file so my layers window doesn’t show all the paths like that.
Edit x2 : figured out how to get to that window AND getting rid of the extranneous ones was pretty simple. Thanks so much - this is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. I’m updating the original .svg with that fix, but still not sure about the next one.
The horizontal lines are parts I added into the compound path manually because I didn’t like the trace, but they show up as white on my screen. Do you happen to know how to fix that? I’m not very familiar with compound paths.
Are you looking for them to be white (not engraved)? If so, then you have to subtract them from the black underneath. It’s called a boolean operation and in Inkscape it’s the Difference operation.
Yes, I expect them to be white. When I open the file in illustrator, the are white, just as in the file preview in my OP. I’m just not sure why those sections show up black for @jbmanning5, while other pieces I manually added to the traced image show up white on both my screen and @jbmanning5’s screenshot. I made the file on a gray background, so it looked like I could tell that the parts in question are subtracted in the compound path rather than separate boxes on top. I’m an illustrator novice though, and am apparently missing something
I’m not sure why they are showing up black for me. I downloaded your new file and it’s still showing black fills in that area for me. I uploaded it to the UI of my forge though and it looks like it identifies it as white! Illustrator might be ticked off at me that I installed Inkscape today to help there when needed…
Yay! Thanks so much - it is great to see that my file worked and most if the detail showed up, even on a smaller scale. Really appreciate it!
Do you remember about how long it took to engrave/cut, and would you mind setting up the file at full size but not printing, just to see how long it would take at full size, when you have a chance?
I’ll DM you my address if you don’t mind shipping it to me
FWIW, here’s my original picture:
maple.
