Hi,
I am cutting out some letters for a neon sign, and I need a groove of a certain width cut in the middle of the letter, and am having trouble spacing it out properly.
You can see from the attached image I can cut the letter no problem, but the inner cut lines are proving difficult.
Thanks!
Jono
Are you using carbide create?
You could select the letter and then use the offset path tool to create an object inside the letter.
I am, yes. My problem with offset is the width I need the channel be is a little in accurate.
Also, with curves and with this particular font, the width of the offset will change throughout the letter.
Talking out loud, I will try to draw the channel first, and do an outside offset to give me the outside letter cut.
Edit: That just gave me a blob that looked like a peep that sat in the sun too long.
Have you tried copying the letter and resizing? You probably need to do one at a time. @WillAdams is very knowledgeable in this area and might have a better suggestion.
Okay, so the problem is, inset a letter:
and you get a noticeably thinner shape:
The solution is to use a monoline font — probably Avant Garde or Futura would work well, or just re-draw things:
but the problem of course is Boolean operations in Carbide Create make polylines:
so one would want to do this sort of thing in some other tool (unless re-drawing).
Another option would be a font which was hollow, or which had fill/decoration options which suit — what exactly are you trying to achieve?
So… slightly humorously, here’s the exact SVG paths you need for your picture:
You can achieve the sort of look you are after in programs such as inkscape by doing a fill operation with a negative offset. Looks like this:
edit: As Will’s example shows it will greatly depend on the geometry of the font as to whether or not the central channel is parallel. Perhaps just a central single-line curve, added by hand, would suffice.
Hey, thanks for the advice.
@Gerry, Hah!
My font choice is fixed, client specified and not changeable.
I usually draw in AutoCAD and then import the dxf. If I can manage to explode the font, i can do a centerline and then do my offsets, but that is also proving tricky.
We’ll be doing 14 letters, so I would like to avoid having to do manual adjustments in carbide create!
Understood!
btw: what font is it, and what do you mean by ‘explode’ ?
The font is called F Grotesk Bold. When use it in autocad, it’s a solid block font
There is an explode text command, which is a windows CAD only option, to convert to a line drawing. Sadly, I am on a Mac.
I can get a version of the line drawing, but it doesn’t come smooth yet. I am thinking I will find a graphic program, like inkscape, that will let get the drawings I need.
For reference, this is a letter cut out, with the ‘neon’ roughly placed in the middle.
If you want to do neon, you want a monoline/weight font.
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