Contour Toolpath Question

[WagnerG (George Wagner)]

I am trying to make a contour toolpath with an offset direction of “Inside / Left”. (This object started as an imported dxf file.) When I create a toolpath parts are Inside but other parts are Outside. I could select them separately to get all tool paths correct but my whole project would involve doing this hundreds of times. Any idea how I can get the tool paths to match? See attached picture for a visual of what I am trying to explain.

Thanks for any help you might be able to provide.

[neilferreri (Neil Ferreri Ω)]

Can you share the DXF?

[WagnerG (George Wagner)]

It is huge, and this is just a small part of it. It is also a purchased file and I would not want to make it public as such. I think I found a very similar question on the forum back from 2016. The source dxf is the same (from lisaboyer.com)

Question from Beginner about Edit Toolpath in Carbide Create

I’m trying to get a job setup for the arrival of my just ordered XL. My project is a clock with wooden gears of decent size. My first hurdle was cleaning up the nonconnecting or overlapping lines in the dxf file I received. I’ve done this for one gear to see if allows me to create a toolpath in carbide create which makes sense - before it was creating extraneous lines due to imperceptable disconnects in the object. I now can create a toolpath, however, the path only displays in 2d and in sim…

But I don’t have access to the tools mentioned to solve it. Freehand is not available any more, but I do have Inkscape. I don’t have DraftSight, but I do now have Fusion 360, which I have not yet learned to use, but will if necessary.

[neilferreri (Neil Ferreri Ω)]

@WagnerG

I would not want to make it public as such

Understood. You can send it to me in a PM, and I could get back to you.
Looks like you’d just need to combine nodes on those paths you reference.

[WagnerG (George Wagner)]

I sent you the dxf. If I try to edit the nodes I get the choice of Smooth or Delete no Combine option.

[WagnerG (George Wagner)]

I tried joining the nodes in Inkscape but that did not seem to work.

[neilferreri (Neil Ferreri Ω)]

What about in Create?

In Inkscape, I’d need to:

1. Select separate paths
2. Ctrl+K to Combine
3. Select new, combined path with node editing tool
4. Ctrl+A to select All nodes
5. Click Join Nodes button
   

[WillAdams (William Adams (Carbide 3D))]

As @neilferreri noted, the problem here is the paths are not being closed when imported.

Please send the file in to support@carbide3d.com and we will do our best to assist.

[Mooselake (Kirk)]

And perhaps contact Clayton or Lisa Boyer, if they’ve been selling a bad DXF for over 5 years perhaps a simple edit is in order?

[WagnerG (George Wagner)]

I have had inconsistent results with these two methods, but I think with repeated tries I can get things fixed. It seems to do best when I strip the objects down to just one piece/gear and then attempt the join. I will probably have to do about 20 individual files but I can do that easy enough. I’ll let you know how it goes. I got three done so far.

[WagnerG (George Wagner)]

Forgot to mention… these steps seem to increase the odds of it working:

Inkscape Tutorial: Converting SVG Files to DXF

[neilferreri (Neil Ferreri Ω)]

Depending on what you’re doing, you may be able to do it faster in Inkscape just selecting several paths with the node editor, selecting ALL nodes, and using the Join selected nodes tool I mentioned above. You could do entire gears like that.

EDIT (posted in PM…thought it might help someone else too):
There is some junk on the far left side of the svg…get rid of it. Then…

1. Select All
2. Switch to node editing
3. Select all nodes
4. Click Join Nodes button
   That’s it!

I usually combine paths on things like this too (Ctrl+K).

gearFix SVG