I am trying to make a logo of mine into a cut file, by simplifying it to just outer lines. The file consists of words and a logo. I managed to get the words corrected, but unfortunately, I am having issues with the logo. I have attached a copy of the file, but, the original file had fill color, and therefore, the components of the logo were stacked, but, without the fill, you can see the lines through the shapes. I need to cut the lines at the edges of the shapes, so that i can use the file as a cut file for a vinyl cutter. This operation would be quite simple with a trim/extend feature, but as Inkscape doesn't have one, what would be the best way to do this? I am also adding a copy of the original file for reference.

Thanks!

It would almost be easier to just do it, than to tell you how. But when I tried to save my results, I got an error that the file is write protected. And I'm not sure how to undo that.

Basically, everything needs to be changed to a path -- groups need to be ungrouped, and clones need to be uncloned. Because the shield shape is made from clones, I had to duplicate the left side, flip and move into correct position.

After you get that far, select all and duplicate (mostly a safeguard - but don't move it - just duplicate), give it a non-black stroke and remove the fill. (I did this to the 1st file, the 1 without color.) With everything still selected, do Path menu > Union. That should get you almost there. The business end of the screwdriver is made of unconnected path segments, and almost everything else should be working.

Undo the Union, now that you can see what still needs some work. Fix the end of the screwdriver, by selecting the nodes that are overlapped, and click "Join selected nodes" button on the Node tool control bar. Fix anything else that doesn't seem to work. Try the Union again, and you can compare to the original very easily, if you didn't move the duplicates.

Or if you can un-write-protect that file, I'll be glad to do for you. Unless you really want to learn how to do it yourself.

I've never used it in this context, but I used it a lot during some experimental wanderings. By the way, interestingly, in the German version of Illustrator the Outline Pathfinder is called "Divide Stroke" which might be called a better description than the original name in the English version.

After about 45 minutes playing around you can get to this:



Still would need major tweaking to clean up the details -node editing- and may not exactly show what you are after with this exactly, or is it?
(Keywords: butt, overprint, trapping etc.)


This recent post is about the same problem -as for its solution.

(Well not exactly because there this kind of flattening has the only purpose of a nicer structure of the drawing as far as I understand, while it doesn't adress the artifact of anti-aliasing -part of the background gets rendered through objects sharing sides. Similarly if you cut the vinyl you can hardly match the two sides exactly, thus you may want to stack a cut layer above another.)