Trouble engraving an overlapped font

[dave5]

I am using an overlapped script font (Monopola Script). If I use let my drawing package export curves for the font, I get engraving voids where the characters overlap. If I convert to curves, then the inner part of some letters (e, y, …) does not show up - i.e. it engraves this part of the letter as well.

[marthajackson1970]

What program are you using?

[jamesdhatch]

@dave5

If I convert to curves, then the inner part of some letters (e, y, …) does not show up - i.e. it engraves this part of the letter as well.

You’re almost there. Make sure the eye has a stroke but no fill.

[dave5]

Affinity Designer

[dave5]

That didn’t seem to make any difference. Two files attached. image of the file and settings to be engraved and the engraving (one on right).

[YawString]

Try selecting both the letters and the “hole” and using geometry->subtract.

[jbmanning5]

Looks to me more like a fill-rule/winding order issue.

Not sure how people in AD are solving that. A search for affinity designer fill rule may bring up some solutions. Or, someone can chime in, or, you might try saving the project as a PDF, which I believe will treat the fill-rule differently than the AD default.

[tim1724]

The easiest fix is to rasterize your text before engraving it. In Affinity Designer you use the Layer→Rasterize command:

It uses your document’s DPI settings so make sure it’s set to 300 DPI or higher:

Hopefully Glowforge will improve their handling of fill modes in the future, but rasterizing fixes it for now. (Just be sure to keep a non-rasterized version in case you need to edit it.)

[gmckayca]

In illustrator you would select all of the text that has been converted to curves and then UNITE

[hansepe]

In AD select your curves, right click, geometry, add

That should do the trick.

[jbmanning5]

But how does it work on letters with counters (p, g, b, etc.)?

[hansepe]

@jbmanning5

letters with counters

Just the same. I left the curves filled this time, and changed the color of the inner letter for illustrative purposes

It combined them into a single curves layer

in outline:

(got tired of using black )

It’s still a vector so can resize, recolor, etc. easily.

[jbmanning5]

I meant in the app

The OP did convert to curves in the second example, which led to the counters being filled in (implying a winding rule error in the app).

[hansepe]

Oops. Sorry. I misread. (gave me an excuse to update AD though )

FWIW: This is a pretty common problem whether using AI or AD for me. The GFUI likes this fix

BTW: Since I’m typing and can’t stop, AD allows me to copy/paste directly into the GFUI too! I just had never tried before.

[jbmanning5]

Weird that you would be seeing it in AI. The fill-rule problem is with the even-odd winding rule and AI tries to do everything it can do to use a non-zero winding rule (which is fully supported in the app).

You can force it to use the even-odd rule, but I don’t know if you can set it by default. You might check in the Attributes panel and see if even-odd was selected at some point (this is where you can force it to use one or the other).

[hansepe]

I’ll do that since I had the same issue just the other day making a quick sign for a co-worker.

[dave5]

[MarcM]

I see you already emailed us about this and we’re working on it there, so I’m going to close this topic.