A Mothers Love is Forever Sign

[djreiswig]

This is a drawing I traced off of a picture with Inkscape. I used some tricks several have shared on here to clean it up and get the splines converted to polylines. I also fixed some problem areas in Draftsight. I cut it out tonight, and it looks good, except the torch seems to be jittery. I assume it is because the curves aren't smooth in the drawing. There are a lot of nodes and short segments instead of larger arcs. This is evident in the close up picture.
How to I go about smoothing this out so it will cut better?

mother final.dxf

[ironhorse]

Here you go, I cleaned it up for you. Good luck.

Greg

A mothers love.dxf

[John Frantum]

I would explode the entire drawing, and zoom to problem areas, trim out wavy lines and replace them with lines or arcs, then re-process.

[djreiswig]

Thanks ironhorse. How did you clean it up? Is there an automated method, or did you have to go through it by hand like John said? I would like to try and learn how to do this myself.

[acourtjester]

Have you tried to save the file using SVG format, it seems art type files work better saved that way.
Also under the Path menu there is a simplify function but sometime that removes to many nodes and the project gets wonkie.

[SeanP]

This might not be much help, but using coreldraw the smooth tool is great for cleaning up nodes, this took me about 4mins it went from 3300 nodes to 743.
One other thing I had checked at one time in mach settings was 'plasma mode' that made juddery cuts, must have been messing with settings at some time but mine cuts way better without that checked.

mother final coreldraw smooth tool.dxf

[djreiswig]

Thanks. I may have to look into CorelDraw. Or just keep uploading messy files and have you guys fix them for us.

[djreiswig]

Looks like SeanP wins the smoothing contest. It has more nodes, but the curves look smoother than the one ironhorse did. I guess you can remove too many nodes. Thanks to both of you for working on this.

[djreiswig]

Correction...You both lose My lovely file made of polylines is now all splines in both of the new files. If I try to convert them back to polylines in the only method I know how, I'm back to where I started. And SeanP's file must be in mm now because it's really huge. SheetCam locked up when I tried to import it. (probably because I picked inches.)
I guess if Corel uses splines, then I'm not interested. They go all wanky when I try and do anything with them in DraftSight.
Why do I use DraftSight? Because I'm familiar with it, and Inkscape and I don't see eye to eye.

[SeanP]

Yes I imported in inches but probably saved as mm, sorry,
I'm not sure about the spline/polyline problem to be honest, I don't really look at what type of lines they are as long as it loads into sheetcam exactly what I have drawn and cuts smooth that's all I care about.

[beefy]

Thanks. I may have to look into CorelDraw.

Just a word of warning about Coreldraw.
If you want to work with layers and export to DXF, and you want to disable exporting of one or more layers, it seems any version since X7 has a bug where you cannot disable DXF layer export. Other formats work OK but not DXF.

Sean,

could you do me a favour and try something for me (I see you have X8). Could you create 2 layers and put say a square on one layer and a circle in the square but put the circle on the other layer.
Disable printing/exporting for the layer with the square, and export to DXF.
Did the disabled layer still export ??????????????? i.e. the DXF contains both the circle and the square.

I'm building up a record of users that have the same bug so I can tell Corel it is a bug, and they need to fix the bug, and not have me doing a whole bunch of un-necessary stuff like setting Coreldraw back to defaults, or completely un-installing and re-installing.

Keith.

[SeanP]

Seen you were having trouble with that, I'll do that no probs, to be honest I never use layers, just do it in sheetcam.
I'll email it you later.

[SeanP]

I see what you mean now, yes it's definitely the same in X8 as well.

[beefy]

Thanks very much Sean,

I'd been using X5 for years, and had re-installed it on several different computers over those years. Always activated fine online. Then a couple of weeks ago Coreldraw starts giving me a message that it's a pirate version. Strange after using/activating it for so many years.

So I take advantage of their amnesty deal and pay another $310 to upgrade to 2017. Of course they don't let you upgrade to the latest version because then they won't have another another upgrade you can pay for (they immediately start asking you to upgrade to the latest version after upgrading to 2017 LOL). Some amnesty deal, if you upgrade to 2017 (amnesty) then upgrade to the latest version, you could just about have paid full price for the latest version.

Now I find out about this new bug which has been there since X7.

Keith.

[djreiswig]

Well, it looks like my thread kind of got off on a tangent...
I've been searching for a way to clean up this file on my own, but I haven't come up with anything that will reduce the nodes, but not convert everything to splines. I played with Inkscape, but everything I try turns the path into splines.
I downloaded a couple of extensions, and tried some online converters/cleaners, but nothing has worked.
I'm not ready to spend big bucks on Corel for the small number of art files I make. I was considering purchasing an older version, but I'm not sure if I can get the results I want from Corel.

[Billythegoat]

Here is a couple cleaned up versions. Not sure how the dxf looks but the SVG went from 3300 nodes to 960 nodes. There were nodes that were way to close together.

I go through and highlight a bunch of nodes in a string and then delete them. Most of the time the line will maintain the same or very close to the same shape. The more you do it the more you will get good at saving the correct nodes and identifying the nodes to delete. And in a drawing like this with so many wavy lines you will never notice slight differences.

It took me exactly 33 minutes(I timed myself) to clean this up in inkscape. I zoom in fairly close. Pushing in space bar and traveling with mouse will move the page around quickly. CTRL Z if you delete to many nodes. Takes a little practice but definately worth it. I know it's a pain in the a@# but definately better than having a junk part.
Good luck

[djreiswig]

I was hoping for a more automated solution. I appreciate your work. Hopefully everyone can get some use out of this file. I'll take a look later tonight.

[Billythegoat]

I hear ya DJ. I have googled this situation to death. I trialed corel draw and the node reducing tool worked great but $500 is to rich for my blood. Like I tell my boys "Grease and Grindstones"

[djreiswig]

I wonder if an older Corel would have that tool.

[djreiswig]

Billythegoat; It looks like all of the short segments are now longer splines instead of polylines. Here we go with the splines again . Is there no way to remove nodes without adding splines?

[Billythegoat]

I turn up my import tolerance in sheetcam so unconnected lines isn't to big of an issue to me.

Seems like every time I open or convert a DXF file in Inkscape I get those broken segments.

[djreiswig]

Okay, I took the cleaned up file and ran it through the SheetCam DXF post and was able to convert the splines back to arcs & lines. Then I rescaled it back up to the correct size of 12.5" high and converted the lines & arcs back to polylines in DraftSight.

A mothers love no splines.dxf

[justfishmetalart]

Thanks for the share and the cleanup!