hi i am new to this and will try to use plain terms to describe issue

if i take an image and vectorize it using inkscape and then try to engrave the vector via cnc (featurecam) there is a problem

the vector within the featurecam program looks great but the toolpath is messed up

it has hundreds of up /down and start stop points and the output looks horrible due to this

if i use vector magic software to vectorize the image it has the same result in featurecam output

the image should take 10min to machine but takes 2 hrs due to hundreds of up/down movements and looks bad due to all the start stops

any ideas how i can get this to work?

is this an issue that is just the way it is? or am i doing something wrong?

Please share an example svg and dxf file, so we can take a look.

You can post a link to google drive or dropbox for the files.

It sounds like your drawing might be made of very many, very short paths, instead of a single path. How did you vectorize it?

i used vector magic auto vectorize and inkscape trace bitmap

used default settings

the vector looks great but doesnt machine properly via featurecam.....too many start/stops up/down movements when engraving the image

it does this for all images i vectorize using vector magic or inkscape

have no clue what google drive or drop box is sorry

ill try to attach dxf file here when i get back on my pc tomorrow

When you say you used vector magic and Inkscape's trace bitmap, do you mean you tried both of them, or actually used both of them? I'm not sure why you would need to auto-trace twice.

I can only speak for Trace Bitmap, since I've never used vector magic. It depends on the image you're tracing, as to what the results would be. But for most images, I haven't seen trace bitmap making lots of short paths, instead of a single path. However, I can imagine certain images might have that result.

So you send the DXF to the cutter? It might be that converting to DXF creates a lot of short paths instead of a long single path. I guess you aren't able to send the SVG to the cutter? Is there any other format the cutter will accept?

It seems like I've heard about an extension that will join all the short paths together.....but I might be dreaming, haha. But that's a step or 2 ahead of where we are at the moment. First we need to be able to look at the files. Or if you can't get them uploaded somewhere, we could probably tell you what to look for.

I'm not sure if you'll be able to attach anything in this board. That's just how the admin has it set up (and doesn't want to change). But it can't hurt to try.

dropbox is a popular file sharing site. Or if you have your own server or website, you could upload there and give us the link.

Or you could use an image host. I only know one which accepts SVG files: https://imgh.us

@Brynn

Is this the extension your talking about?

https://github.com/fablabnbg/inkscape-chain-paths

Best Regards

Mmm....maybe. The description is a little confusing. But yes, I think that's it.