New here :) I made a free photo-to-engraving tool for y'all to introduce myself

[brettzel]

I built Plotcaster (www.plotcaster.com), a free tool that runs in your browser and turns a photo or any place on a map into a line-art SVG or a dithered black-and-white PNG at your DPI, ready to drop into the Glowforge app. It also has a mode where you can type in an address and easily get the city’s road or topography. I’d love feedback from people about how I can make it better for you .

[evansd2]

Hey this is great. I like the ui, and the concept is excellent.

Since you’re looking for suggestions, I wonder if a radial/spiral option would be a good addition?

[Xabbess]

Welcome to the community! What a great way to introduce yourself. I’m going to give it a try.

[CMadok]

I’m not sure if it’s the same thing, but there are a while bunch of photo options, including spiral:

It’s really cool, but i can’t seem to get the detail i want for certain images. I think they are just too small or far away. I need to play around with the settings more.

Finally got my cat to show up.

[evansd2]

@CMadok

there are a while bunch of photo options, including spiral

Huh not sure how I missed the spiral option.

This whole thing reminds me of a little prior art:

SquiggleCam - ultra fast photo to engravings converter

Hello! Building on top of the work previously demonstrated here by another forum member (@gwygonik): community.glowforge. com/t/generative-svgs-for-engraving/5843 , I built an open source, web-based software for converting images into engraveable artworks. These engravings take only a fraction of the time comparing to raster images and the output should be compatible with Glowforge since it’s just SVG files that are generated. Check out a little example of the image → SVG conversion: [imag…

And my own adventures in this space:

Traveling salesman problem revisited

Wait, don’t close the door, I’m sure I could interest you in a set of *SLAM!* [IMG_2710] Apologies, but this post is going to be complex, text-heavy and kinda nerdy. You have been warned. So I finally got to the traveling salesman problem. This is a topic that has been covered a few times before, but I had some ideas about how to do it a little differently, and now with clean corners, it seemed like it was about time. The traveling salesman problem is a broad topic, if you have no idea wh…

@brettzel take a look at my traveling salesman problem post, it might give you some ideas.

[reynoso]

Welcome @brettzel to the community. Thanks for sharing your work. I will certainly give it a spin as I enjoy making maps.

[brettzel]

OOOO super helpful; I will make some adjustments. If you have any other issues at all just let me know. Feedback like this is INCREDIBLY helpful and will help make a stronger software for y’all.

[brettzel]

I will take a look! thank you so much

[brettzel]

Awwwh thanks! Yeah I was actually an employee back around 2017-2019 but don’t think I have access to my old account so I thought I’d jump back in again with some of the things I have been building!

[MakerMatthew]

Neat stuff! Welcome!

[markevans36301]

Well I got to say, your introduction is a lot better than mine was. “Hi, I’m mark and I’m buying a GF in the crowd funding”.

I hope you will stick around.

[dwardio]

Welcome to the community, and thank you for the awesome share!

[ellencadwell]

Welcome to the community! Or back, I should say, since you say you were an employee way back when. Thanks for the share! I haven’t done a lot with photos, and never done a map, so this will be great to try!

[dklgood]

Welcome and thank you. This is quite a new rabbit hole for me to explore.

[ptodd]

A wonderful contribution! Thank you for sharing!