Carbide Motion Justification Question

New user here, apologies in advance for not being able to find the answer of a simple question.

I’m using the Shapeoko to build some simple tooling. I created the SVG drawing in AI and it is set up the way I want it. When I bring it into Carbide Motion the layout is not in the same location, it lines everything to the bottom. How do I get it to justify correctly on the work space?

Sometimes geometry will move around if it’s not all in a composite path. Best practices:

  • view in outline mode before saving for Carbide Create — what one sees as lines there should be what is imported by CC. If need be, convert type to paths, union as needed, instantiate strokes as outlines, &c. (save the file under a different name)
  • combine everything into a composite path
  • (optional?) ensure that winding is correct (outermost stroke counterclockwise, next set clockwise and alternate)

If you still can’t get it, post a file here or send it to support@carbide3d.com and we’ll look into it.

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Thank You!

Easy fix. I simply put the objects in a box (equal to the size of the work space) and it is all where it needs to be now.

I’m sure I’ll be asking more dumb questions but hopefully I’ll be able to make contributions once I get familiar with the equipment.

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I’m still having a problem with CM importing svg files developed in AI. The small circles are where they should be. For the larger circles the Y axis is off by 0.18" on all of them. The first circle on the bunch should be centered at 2.34/2.34 but for some reason it’s coming in at 2.34/2.16. Any idea on why it is not populating correctly? 11.5x11.5.c2d (6.0 KB)

In the past when this sort of thing has happened the solution has been to make things into a composite path before importing — post the .AI and .SVG files?

Sorry, i’m just now learning design so I need to do some research on composite path.

How do I post the .ai and .svg file? When I attempt to upload it says it is not supported?

Save the .ai file as a .pdf (or just rename it) — SVG should be supported for upload.

Here is the pdf. Still trying to get the svg to upload. It keeps giving me an error.

11.5x11.5.pdf (790.2 KB)

This is the error when I try and upload the svg file “Sorry, but we couldn’t determine the size of the image. Maybe your image is corrupted?”

Oh. Wash the file through Inkscape or something which will set the pixel dimensions of the SVG.

To fix this, in Adobe Illustrator, select all the circles and the rectangle, then use the Pathfinder window to “Minus Front” — that should make this a composite path and that’s what has worked in the past to fix this sort of thing, but doesn’t seem to be helping here (I seem to get identical imports)

Please send a matched set of files into support@carbide3d.com:

  • source .ai
  • .svg as saved from Adobe Illustrator
  • .c2d as instantiated when importing the SVG

with specific notes on which geometry moved and how much — when I stack a transparent pixel image from Adobe Illustrator on top of the screengrab from Carbide Create things seem to line up perfectly.

This is simple enough — just use the center / radius information from AI to recreate in CC?

I’m not sure what you mean by washing the file though Inkscape? I did try and make a “minus font” path but it didn’t help. I forwarded the match set of file to support.

Thanks for your help.

Thanks!

I’ve mentioned this to the rest of the team — if no one else puzzles it out, I’ll see what I can figure out this evening.

Just out of curiousity, do you have the zero / origin set consistently in the .AI file?

I’m not sure what you mean about the 0/0 set consistently in AI?

I set up the AI file on a 11.5x11.5 work space. From there I set all the cutouts relative to each other so the spacing is consistent. The problem is when I load into CC the larger circles shift 0.18" (only on the Y axis) but the smaller outer circles are correctly placed. So when I bolt the jig to the table everything is off. It did the same thing on a file where I have a 10x10 matrix (100 holes).

Just wanted to check — it’s probably a bug in CC’s import, esp. based on that very clear description. Hopefully a developer will look into it presently.

Thanks, let me know what you find out.

I believe that the problem is tied up in how Adobe Illustrator works / measures.

When I open up your PDF in AI CS2, the center of the larger circle at the bottom left is located 2.3405 inches (horizontally) and 2.1595 inches (vertically) from the bottom left corner of the page:

If you could zip up and post a .svg and .c2d which exhibits this problem and the matching .ai source file along w/ straight-forward instructions for re-creating them, we’d be glad to look into it, but I get pretty much identical dimensions in AI, Inkscape, and Carbide Create from your file (identical to 3 decimal places w/ rounding).

Have you tried re-opening the SVG after exporting it from AI?

Hang on, just found SVG (11.5x11.5 pathfinder minus compound path.svg) which you sent into support — will try with it next — dry well — had to scale it up 125%, but once I did, I got essentially identical positioning information from it.

Thanks, let me check my inputs again.

I found the error. Thanks for your help

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