Letters in SVG

HI Guys
I am a real noob and still learning inkscape. are there any ready-to -use SVG files available for letters please? if not can anyone point me to a good step by step tutorial on how to create letters please?

Thanks in advance

Linsey

You can use inkscape to write anything you like using the text tool. When youā€™ve got it sized and positioned how you want it, use the ā€œobject to pathā€ menu option, which will convert it to a group of path objects.

If this all reads like random words, Iā€™m afraid thereā€™s a bit of a learning curve in general. Iā€™d start with the tutorials on the forum.

Further reading: search forum for ā€œtext pathsā€.

https://community.glowforge.com/search?context=topic&context_id=23760&q=Text%20paths&skip_context=true

6 Likes

Thankyou ill try that

If you want to cut them out and the typeface has overlapping letters (cursive scripts, for example), youā€™ll need to combine the paths together. I donā€™t know Inkscape, but in Illustrator itā€™s part of the pathfinder menu.

1 Like

I wouldnā€™t mind throwing one together for you. What type of font are you looking for?

I just learned how to do that a few days ago. After you convert it to path you select all your letters and go to ā€˜Pathā€™ and ā€˜Unionā€™ and itā€™ll print as a single stroke instead of several.

2 Likes

Alphabet

Here is one. Itā€™s set up for doing inlays. Red is cut and then convert blue to engrave in the GFUI for placing the letters.

I just got to make a video how to on this for you. Here are two that treat it.

6 Likes

Excellent! This should go in the matrix. @jules?

How does the Prego commercial go? ā€œItā€™s in there!ā€ :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like

I think you have to ungroup the letter paths before you try to union them, yes? I think the path commands only work when paths are selected.

1 Like

Iā€™ve never had to ungroup them. Once you put them in paths the computer sees them as separate entities, which is why they print funky if itā€™s a cursive/handwriting script.

Huh, I could swear Iā€™ve had trouble with path booleans when dealing with groups. Maybe itā€™s when it is groups of mixed object types or something. Or wait maybe youā€™re talking about illustrator? I am talking inkscape.

1 Like

Iā€™m talking Inkscape. I donā€™t have illustrator yet, itā€™s on the list though. Iā€™ve had issues with pathing and joins with everything else but not from text. Maybe itā€™s because Inkscape makes the letters so pathing them isnā€™t hard? I donā€™t know.

1 Like

Iā€™ve always had to ungroup text before using ā€œUnionā€ to join them together in Inkscape.

Use the ā€œUnionā€ command to join the handwriting/scripts together and eliminate the overlapping parts that do weird things. You might discover after converting the text to paths, youā€™ll need to ungroup the text objects before you can Union them together.

2 Likes

I understand what youā€™re saying. Iā€™m saying that Iā€™ve been doing nothing but text work for the last week and Iā€™ve never had to do this? I convert to path, select it all and union and it works.

1 Like

A great way to learn some stuff in Inkscape is to walk through some of those first few projects that Glowforge put together. The custom luggage tag one and the lidded box one show a few basic things in Inkscape and you can kind of get going from there.

1 Like

So I just went in, made a text object, then converted it to path.

As expected, this made a group of path objects.

I selected that group, went to path->union, and it remained a group of paths that were not unified.

I triple-clicked on the letters to select one of them (without ungrouping them first). This puts me ā€œin the groupā€ as far as scope of focus is concerned. I dragged a rectangle around all the letters (which are still grouped but now I can modify the group from within), and path->unioned. This made them all one unified path.

I clicked on a different object to get out of the group, then clicked on the newly ā€œunionedā€ letters, and it was a group of one path object.

Alternately, I could have selected the group of letter paths and ongrouped them, then path->unionā€™ed and it would have worked too.

Soā€¦ Iā€™m not sure how your unioning is working, but Iā€™m glad it is :slight_smile: Maybe I have some different settings from you, or weā€™re on different versions of inkscape or something (0.92.1), but this pretty much confirms for me that a group of paths wonā€™t union unless I take steps to make it work in my setup. I kind of wish it worked for me like youā€™re describing, itā€™s kind of easy to miss (it fails silently) and I have failed to unify paths because of it.

2 Likes

Hey maybe. I dunno. Iā€™m pretty novice to this whole thing. Iā€™ve only worked with Inkscape for a grand total of 7 weeks so Iā€™m just figuring most of this out on the fly. A lot of my first projects had text that turned out wonky because I didnā€™t know about union at all.

On a side note, I totally understand why artists and makers tend to be perfectionists lol. You look at a project you did before you learned new tricks and cringe, thinking ā€œMan I wish I could redo that now.ā€

2 Likes

I figured out what was different for me! I convert to path, but then I was tweaking spacing with the letters. So I already had an individual letter selected. So technically Iā€™m not breaking them apart but I already had a single letter selected so when I then select the rest it unions without a problem.

Aha there you go. You were inside the group at the time.

Nice detective work! :slight_smile:

1 Like