Im so close

outline%20of%20bear%20paw
bearpaw%20again%20|243x500

ok. i traced image off a tshirt and GF engraved, cut perfect. I am trying to make these into earrings and need this as a illlustrator file to add/change etc… i know that images off bed trace cant be saved onto your computer (boo), so i tried a screen shot, taking a picture and emailing it too myself etc… and this is as close as i can get to recreating the image trace for cutting,engraving. this one is close, but it wants to engrave the entire pad, not the outline of the pads and the cut lines on the outiside are perfect. how?? do i fix this??

You open it in Illustrator and do a trace bitmap (that is the Inkscape command, I don’t do Illustrator but cynd11 is replying and she does.) Then delete the inner traces and overlay the engraves on your trace. At least that is the idea.

Yes, you are very close.

First of all, open the file in Illustrator and set the View to Outline. Then zoom way in. You will see that all of your images consist of two outlines–lots of duplicates. Delete either the “outies” or “innies” so you only have one outline for each form. Set view back to Preview. Now select all the inner blue figures and set them to fill (any color) and no stroke. Set the outer cutline to stroke, no fill.

That’s it!

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I know how to do it in Inkscape… :grimacing:

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A couple of design notes:

One, if that’s a bear or dog paw, the claw prints are missing :slight_smile: (and if it is a bear, and not a dog named Bear, then it’s also missing a toe)

But that brings me to Two, the more important point: this is an earring, presumably fairly small. That level of detail is probably not needed, and you can find lots of simplified paths out there to work with for free. I am not just speaking aesthetically here, when you take a convoluted path like your rough outlines here and scale it way down, you are now making the laser jiggle all around in a small space, which is asking for at least overburn if not outright fire.

You might be better served by searching google for “paw inurl:svg”, like so:

https://www.google.com/search?q=paw+inurl:svg&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi5n-rkt6PkAhWnnuAKHV-iDekQsAR6BAgHEAE&biw=1920&bih=888

Which yields a few promising candidates:

Black_Paw

or this one which is more cartoon/icon-ish:

Paw-print

… but these are just two, there are literally thousands out there.

Both are nice clean paths where the laser won’t loiter around and overheat your materials, and quite suitable for small stud-style earrings. By contrast, I wouldn’t cut your original design in anything under about 3" across because of the rough quality of the paths.

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this is the trace image that cut perfect, and what im trying to get the illustrator file to duplicate. your suggestions fixed it, thank you! but its wanting to engrave the entire pad part, not just an outline of the pad like in the picture.

Oh, I didn’t realize that’s what you wanted. Well then, in the illustrator file you need to make another image in each of those pads to represent the inner part of the engrave edge. One way to do that is to select the toe pad and choose Offset Path (or something like that—I’m away from my computer right now), set that for a negative offset and fiddle with the number with Preview on until it looks like you want. Then you need to choose the outer and inner perimeters of the toe pad and find Compound Path from one of the menus, and choose Make. Now you will be able to fill the toe pad with a color so it will engrave.

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Cynd11 thank you very much for your time! I will try that now! Thanks again!

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Picture024_29Apr05
living up to the name Bear

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My tenant’s dog doesn’t really live up to bear, unless it is a hibernating one. Then he nails it. He used to live up to his nickname, Rascal, but lately he’s been failing at that as well.

almost%20bear%20outline%20with%20number

ok, gotten this far, thank you to cynd11, the make compound path and fill with color works on the ones you see here, but one of the small pads and the large pad with the number refuse to cooperate. they want to be all one color instead of getting along with the others…brats…
ideas?? time out in the corner for them??

I don’t know about Illustrator, but in Inkscape all I had to do was Path->Break apart and then Path->Difference. Then I filled the resulting object.

paw

do you know what made it do this? just curious to learn for future. Thank you! by the way, really appreciate your time in helping me.
to everyone that helped today, huge thank you and love your “bears” too cute!

In Illustrator the problem might be the “winding rule” issue, or the path direction. I’ve seen this happen, and the solution is to select the thing (compound path) you want to fill, then open the Attributes panel and click the various icons at the top of the panel for winding rule or path direction, and see if they make a difference.

Oh by the way, don’t forget you’ve got duplicates of all those figures in your original image (I guess from the autotracing). When I view it zoomed way in I see that the paths are very slightly different so they should be easy to select and get rid of the extra one. If you don’t, you will find that the laser will cut the perimeter twice and give you lots of overburning.

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They are done…huge thank you to everyone!! Made two for each daughter to wear at the football game tonight.
Thank you again for your time, couldn’t have done it without you guys!!!

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They turned out great! I bet everyone at the game will love them.

I hope so! Thank you! Maybe like them enough to sell some too lol

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