Tracing Parts and Tools

Hello all, I am brand new to this CNC world and I’m looking to purchase a Shapeoko very soon. I have a question though. Is it possible to manually move the tool and have it trace an item back to the software so it can be manipulated? I was thinking about making some custom tool storage and that would make life so much easier!

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The machine can’t read its position when moved manually. There are “digitizing probes” which do a similar function automatically, but I am not familiar with the software.
I believe many people just use photographs or scans and trace tools in a vector graphics program like Inkscape. You’d just need something to accurately scale the image.

We have a tutorial on this as described by @neilferreri

https://www.shapeoko.com/wiki/index.php/Carbide_Create_Photo_Tracing

Awesome, that’s exactly what I needed! Thanks!

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