@cynd11: That’s ok. It helped make the point but in another way.
I have no expectations about precision with the scan. Just showing what happens, especially as I did enter the thickness of material and how that makes a difference. I even wonder if I somehow nudged the image since it is slightly left shifted but I tried to take pics of exactly what happens. You can get some good precision but scanning a drawing is totally different from putting a design file in as you note. Especially when you start indicating where around the line the cut is going to fall. Being able to use a fine point sharply is a big improvement.
Show me how your machine does it. Having other references is great.
Definitely, the cutting of an autotrace on top of a scanned figure is less accurate than for a design file. What I find interesting is that the offset on your cat/piggy appears to be shifted more east or southeast whereas mine is more due south. But in both cases it is a pretty reproducible amount. It sure seems like there should be a way to compensate for these differences, and I’m betting GF team is right on it.
Yikes…this is what I’ve tried doing a search for…making multiples of the same thing! I couldn’t find it anywhere, so my wording must not have been just right. I remember seeing in the original video on the GF website…duplicating those party invitations. Can you tell me how to do that, please? I would be ever so grateful!
In this particular case I created the design file with eight cats on it. But I think what you are seeing in the GF video is that after you cut something, take it out of the bed, put some new material in (or move the design over to an unused portion of your material) and re-run the job (after verifying that your settings are still correct for that material). You can do this as many times as you want as long as you don’t go back to the Design catalog space. If you do that you will have to re-select all the settings.
Also you can select the design and copy it, and paste it as many times as you wish and do it all in one setting if you have a a bed of material. (Just in case you were referring to this, stating the obvious, because the obvious sometimes is un-noted.)
I’ll say! I actually never have tried it, although I should have. Duh! Thanks!
One thing I did try, though, was holding down the space bar to switch to the hand tool, and I was delighted to discover that it works just like it does in Illustrator.
Get out of here. I wish they would have some tool tips or something. That switching back and forth drives me nuts. So we can toggle with space bar from select to move screen. Yippee. That is an obvious thing that I missed, like the contrast thing.
OK…well, thank you. I was thinking maybe I could duplicate or copy something and just pile them on. So I guess that’s not an option. But, I suppose we can just do it like you did…put any number of things into one design. I was hoping there might be a cooler way. Appreciate your experience.
Wow…I didn’t see this until after I posted back to cynd11. That’s exactly what I was wanting to know. We tried it last night and it didn’t work. We used keyboard shortcuts cmd C and cmd V. Seemed like it should work that way, so I’ll have to try it again. Thank you!
Click the design, ctrl-C, ctrl-V. (Mac is… command? Not sure). Will copy and paste. I’m sorry it wasn’t more intuitive! Please file a bug that it was hard to figure out.
I have had an Apple computer continuously on my desk since 1979… (made the jump from Apple ][ to Mac in 1985) I have an impressive array of ancient keyboards (at this point those go mostly onto raspberry PIs etc, and I have the great apple white bluetooth keyboard - the real keyboard not those chicklet pieces of crap - which runs our teleprompter in my video studio). On my desk on the other hand at work and home I have the super expensive daskeyboard mechanical keyboards. Sure they are $180, but you can customize the color of the cherry mx key switches (I selected browns) and they feel amazing.
Thank you @marmak3261! That was very helpful. I don’t use trace much and was not aware of all the different operations you can do with it (maybe it would help if I read the manual-haha). There is really quite a lot to it. I will have to play around with it some more. Part of my reason for avoiding it is my lack of drawing skills.
Glad to see you using corrugated cardboard too. I’ve been avoiding it for fear of a greater fire risk but looks like I’m being unnecessarily paranoid.
Oh, and that is quite a nice video setup you have!
