I spent several hours today trying to vector a different file to try to carve. I tried Inkscape and several online applications but nothing close to carving in wood. Are there any credible places that will vector a file good enough to carve? I have several Soldiers leaving my company and I am trying to make them going away gifts myself. This is our patch I am trying to do. Thanks in advance for the help.
Hi Michael,
Did you try Carbide Create’s image tracing ?
No guaranteed result but it’s very decent at tracing bitmap when there is sufficient contrast to being with, and this image does. You will probably need to play with the tracing settings and touch things up here and there manually afterwards, but this sounds doable.
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If by some chance you can’t find success using automated tracing techniques, there are some more primitive ways to replicate the design you could consider.
The geometric elements such as the oval and straight line segments can readily be drawn in CC directly, or in Inkscape/Affinity. Same with the text, even the large 1. This will also give you much better vectors than tracing.
The knight is a complicated thing, but you could either:
- Pop the image into a vector tool, lower its opacity, then manually draw vector lines over the image’s lines.
or - Print the image, trace over it with tracing-paper and a biro (like at primary school), and then take a photo of the tracing. It will be much easier to vectorize.
The helicopter traces well enough in Inkscape to just copy and paste into the final composite.
This is a few hours work, but you mentioned you’d already spent a few hours trying the automation route.
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For an image like that, it’s best to just break down and redraw from scratch if you can’t source a vector original.
If you have difficulties w/ that, let us know and we’ll work through it here.
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I do this type of thing often. I probably do it the very hard way, but I use Fusion 360 and bring the image in as a canvas. Then I use the arc, circle, line and spline tools to trace the image. I wouldn’t trace the text; I’d find a matching font. I used to do the Inkscape method, but I found I spent as much time cleaning up and fixing things as I would if I just started from scratch. I’m having a hard time figuring out what the big mass is beneath the helicopter.
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It’s a knight in armor.
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I ran your original file and turned it into a vector with little nodes.
Then imported it and set v-carve for a depth of .050"
With a bit more clean up this should come out nice.
I tried to upload the svg file but the system won’t let me?
Screen grabs.
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