Laser cut maps as gifts

Made these as Christmas gifts for friends. Places they grew up at or have fond memories. 11"x14", BB 1/8" plywood. GF Basic.

Would love to make larger maps but can’t figure out how to cut the SVG files on Inkscape or AI. Tried the AI knife tool but the nodes get messed up and need to align each node along the cut line separately. Is there an easier way to cut the SVG file?

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These are very fine gifts.

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I like your maps! One of these days I’ll get around to doing one of New Orleans

For splitting images, you might find something to help you using this search:
https://community.glowforge.com/search?q=split%20file

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I feel so left out. My map would look something like:

But I don’t have neighbors to complain about, so there’s that. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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You could include different details in your map! It doesn’t have to be just roads. You could include elevation changes, streams or lakes, or even trees. That is probably about the only thing out there where you are. Make it fun and throw in some random animals :wink:

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I got all excited a while back when someone posted an elevation map, and went looking for ours. It was just as boring. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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We just bought a new house in the western NC mountains. Can’t see any neighbors and it’s cut into the side of a mountain so the topo lines are all squiggly and close together :slight_smile:

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Heh. Our family’s whole combined 450 acres has like three topo levels on it, at the highest frequency on the online app I used to look at it. :wink:

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Thank you, I will check it out.

Look great!

You made some gorgeous maps!

Yep, I’m in the UK which you can normally rely on to be (a) hilly (b) have lots of houses and roads.

But I live in a flat flood plain with very few roads at all.

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Thank you!

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You probably have more contour lines in the stock tanks than the actual land :joy:

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Okay, I think there is a way to make the AI Knife tool work for cutting SVG files into more “cutting bed appropriate” manageable sizes. I have not actually tried cutting large maps yet but the key seems to be to use the “path > simplify” tool (reducing the number of nodes) in AI before using the knife tool. I tried cutting two SVG files with and without simplifying and the one with simplified path worked much better. When the knife cuts thru a path with dense nodes it causes the vectors to go haywire and mess up the path. Hope this tip helps others.

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Truth!

There are a few very easy ways in Inkscape to cut down the size,
The easiest is to add a rectangle over the area you want and use “intersection” on each layer you want to cut, You can also make the rectangles on the outer edge and use the “difference” command (both under path)

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Thank you. It works and is easier than the knife tool in AI.

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Gorgeous!! I’m trying to get to this at some point. What did you use to make the map for software?

Snazzy maps and AI is the easiest method to use.

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