Is there a way to fillet (AutoCAD term for adding a radius) text corners? Right now when I do a straight wall inlay and the text corner radius is too sharp for the radius of my bit, I am having to manually move the nodes and guess on the radius.
so there is a trick to convert vectors (including text) into a rounded shape that is fit for inlays by rounding it all.
In the step below I am assuming an 1/8" bit, but the principle works for any size, you just need to scale the numbers
Step 1: Select and group your original vectors (text or otherwise)
Step 2: Use the “Offset vectors” tool to add an outside offset vector of 1/16" (so half diameter of your bit)
Step 3: Group the result of that
Step 4: Keep this result selected and use the Offset vectors" tool to add in inside offset vector of 1/8"
Step 5: Group the result of that
Step 6: Use the “Offset vectors” tool to add in outside offset vector of 1/16"
Step 7: Group the result of that
Step 8: you can now delete the groups created in steps 2 and 4… and potentially your original vector group as well if you have no more use of it
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Thank you fenrus, you just made my day and saved me a lot of time! I messed with that technique a bit and it seems to have it’s limitations such as you can’t use it on skinny text or small text but overall it gave me a 1/16" radius on inside and outside corners. Very much appreciated!
it will remove any geometry smaller than your bit for sure… and in general, the smaller your bit the better it works
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I’m sure it took a lot of trial and error to discover this technique. It definitely beats moving nodes or tracing the entire wording in cad.
I’m just a little bit confused…why are you doing the splitting in half? I have just done a 1/8" inside offset, followed immediately by a 1/8" outside offset and it works perfectly well. What am I missing?
that works for one of the corners (inside iirc).
For inlays you need both the inside and outside corners to be rounded… an for that you need both grow and shrink
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also for 1/8" … you will kill a lot of geometry that you can cut but won’t survive the shrink with 1/8"
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Ah…makes sense. OK. Thanks. 20 Characters
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