Scroll saw bowl reborn

Can AutoCAD draw parameters ic equations? And then loop through it with a counter ? If so awesome. Solidworks can do the equation drawing bit, but I don’t think it can loop through it. Yes I can offset, but the offseting never seems to work out right. Also in response inkscape and offsets it does, it does do it like AutoCAD as far as I can tell. Such as just specifying a distance and go.

I didn’t think so after reading your questions but then I did some googling. Apparently it has its own scripting language that is capable of looping and counting. Its called AutoLISP - Wiki Article
Here is the User Manual

Never used this but I would be interested in hearing from someone that has.

This is one of the best examples of using digital tools to do things that mere human calculation would be impossible for the average person. Great work and thanks for the excellent pictures. And this forum has led me to explore so many Inkscape and Sketchup plugins. Inkscape has a parametric and a loop plugin. I was thinking about having to code something in Scratch to make nifty whirls a la Spirograph and lo and behold the tools are already there.

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Wow. Very cool! You’re on the right track: outputting SVGs is the best way to drive Glowforge from code. As for curling, if the wood has curled, Glowforge can handle it, but it can’t prevent warped wood from being warped. And as you indicate, sometimes cutting relieves stress and causes the material that’s been cut to curve, even though it was straight before. That’s something to talk to your wood supplier about, though.

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Here is a link discussing what the Inkscape extension can do and how it can be used for a specific shape. @rpegg will like this one.

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These are very beautiful! @kevinmcvey just did a laser thursday project where he used code to generate a bunch of cut files: Algorithmically generated laser design

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Check out OpenSCAD, this is exactly the sort of thing it is designed to do, but beware, it is a pretty complex beast. AutoLISP is a fascinating system, but also has a pretty steep learning curve (and AutoCAD is far from free). I don’t know anything about Inkscape’s scripting (if it has any) but your Javascript idea might just be the fastest/easiest way of all!

There are lots of existing JS drawing engines out there, and many of them allow you to render directly into SVG, like:

https://jonobr1.github.io/two.js/

https://dojotoolkit.org/documentation/tutorials/1.10/gfx/

http://paperjs.org/tutorials/geometry/vector-geometry/

http://soulwire.github.io/sketch.js/

etc.

Lately I have been playing with P5 ( http://p5js.org ) which is a re-write of processing in javascript.

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Appreciate all the links!

That’s awesome on the links! Be checking those out. Inkscape extension for parametric curves that the other poster posted to is the extension I used. I need it to do one iteration of the equation, then up one variable , then repeat. The variable is basically the offset.

Sorry to be vague but I sell these, and though I love sharing the ideas , I also don’t want to give the keys to the kingdom all away. Though if someone wants to partner , message me. If that’s possible on these forums.

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Click on the avatar of the poster and their profile card comes up. Messaging button appears.

An Instructable using JavaScript to design jewelry Using parametric functions. http://m.instructables.com/id/Javascript-generated-laser-cut-jewellery/

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@marmak3261 that is freaking awesome! That so helps me. Also opens up a ton of new possibilities. Thanks!

@marmak3261 i tried the instructable. It works great right up to creating the SVG. The part to download the SVG doesn’t seem to work for me. Any one who knows Javascript and HTML have an opinion?

Actually just tried this in Explorer rather then Chrome. It doesn’t download, but I can right click and save. So that’s fine by me :smile:

I upgraded to Windows 10 today so didn’t take the time to load the script. Will work on it and see. Glad you got it working. One of the things that I noticed first in the gift shops were laser earings and I have quite a few nieces and sisters-in-law and other worthy earing wearers that I’d love to make bespoke earings for. I’ve been fascinated by computer generated art for a long time and when I taught elementary technology we used Scratch to make lots of pretty spirograph stuff that they could then color inbetween. Never thought of it being useful, but now with a Glowforge, it will be.

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I got a little a head with it. Can’t get the download part to work , but in explorer and not chrome I can right click and save as SVG. Also I cannot for the life of me figure out how to add a line to an existing path. I think I’ll just make a variable , have a string in it , and make a loop that adds to the string each segment . then feed the variable that has a string of the full path into the SVG path. I’ll try tonight.

Work always in the way of goofing around .

This is cooler than words can describe. Can’t wait to make one, too!

Also want to put this link. Now that I have the JavaScript base code I do want to play and be inspired by these doodles.

Oh cool. Last two days at work have been killer. But tomorrow its just me and the couch. So I hope by Sunday , maybe have something to show.

Wouldn’t mind trying to put something together for the community. Or have a “best equation” contest :stuck_out_tongue:

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Ok so quick update, I’m heading out but just got something working. I’ll go into more detail later.

Javascript and SVG libraries are a little above my level of tinkering. After spending half a day yesterday pound away, I got a something. I think my major problem is the coordinate system. I need to figure out how to shift it from being 0,0 in top left to being centre, centre, 0,0. Preferably with top right side being positive, positive. I plan to get back to that later.

I use to know Excel and VBA so I resorted to that. The process I have at the moment is:
1 - VBA macro to generate table of points(was able to reduce my level of accuracy and still keep my lines)
2 - same macro(or manually) creates a XY scatter graph with lines
3 - macro then turns off axes, legend, etc
4 - save graph as PDF
5 - open in Inkscape, fiddle and/or resize if need be, save as SVG

I tried to just save the points as CSV and figure a way to convert to SVG, but found nothing easy. Also with excel, I found it easy to make all my variables easy to change to get different results. Next step is to figure away to do different equations. Batman equation maybe?

I am sure OpenOffice could do the same. I just prefer Excel. Also with Excel I can see my numbers and understand what’s going on. With Javascript, I was stuck writing a word document and praying. I would really like to do a Javascript version. Anyone more familiar with that stuff, please contact. Would love to try to create a something.

Cheers all