I'm trying to create the underlying tracing in Inkscape, by joining the circles together, then breaking them at the tangent points, but can't figure out how to do anything even close to that. Any tips on getting the circles to (1) touch each other so I can (2) join them, then (3) break them apart at the intersections to make the lines I need? Or maybe I'm going at it completely wrong.

Thanks for the help!

I can't seem to get the picture to show here, but if you paste http://www.ebcustomknives.com/Pics/friction-02.png you'll see it - sorry for extra work.

The red circles are where I'm trying to make it happen.

Hi,

You might convert the circles to paths, then enable snapping to smooth nodes. You can add nodes to refine where the circles snap.

Chime back and let us know how it goes...

I´m using an Inkscape devel version which has a filet&chamfer extension implemented. That allows some sweet rounding at corner points:


Cheers
P.

So P, you didn't even use my circles, you just drew the lines and then gave them the same fillet? That is pretty cool. Guess I'd need to download the dev version, I'm on 0.91 right now.