Inkscape modifying path while doing path > division

grep · Postby **grep** » Mon Jan 29, 2018 8:01 am

Hi all,

When i do path > division, inkscape modifies the lines of the curves.

See this gif (click to see).

How can I prevent it from deforming the letters?

Thanks,

Greg

Moini · Postby **Moini** » Mon Jan 29, 2018 9:46 am

Try if it works better if you either:
- make the letters larger before you do division
- set Inkscape's precision higher in Edit > Preferences > Input/Output > SVG output

Lazur · Postby **Lazur** » Mon Jan 29, 2018 9:52 am

Coming from the IRC, precision is at the maximum. Using a "sans-serif font" "e" with a 32 size in the example above.
(Guessing Greg is not on windows).

I remember there was a similar topic related to an inkscape bug but I cannot find that nor can reproduce the issue on win 64bit 0.92.2.

Postby **brynn** » Mon Jan 29, 2018 10:15 am

I wonder if adding extra nodes to the text, before doing the division, would help? Just my first thought -- untested.

Any chance of getting a test SVG file? (Too busy to make my own, at the moment.)

Edit
Not sure if it would work, since I can't see what else is happening in the file. But possible different approach -- make a custom stripe pattern to fill the text with.

grep · Postby **grep** » Mon Jan 29, 2018 11:21 am

Thanks for your answers!

I am on Linux Mint, Inkscape 0.91. As I was telling Lazur on IRC, I do the following :
- Open a new document
- Create text "hello" with default settings (sans serif, 32)
- Path > Object to Path
- Fill : None, Stroke : Black
- Ungroup, then Path : Combine
- Create a hatch using bezier tool on top
- Select both, and Path > Division

The screencapture gif has been taken in Display Mode > Outline.

Here is a file ready, just before I do the "Path > Division".

pathdivisionexemple.svg: (4.75 KiB) Downloaded 189 times

Lazur · Postby **Lazur** » Mon Jan 29, 2018 11:51 am

The file works perfectly here on win64bit Inkscape 0.92.2 -maybe an update will fix the issue?
This page offers a download link for 0.92.1 on linux.

grep · Postby **grep** » Mon Jan 29, 2018 12:50 pm

I installed 0.92. I get the same results.

Postby **brynn** » Mon Jan 29, 2018 9:16 pm

Well, adding extra nodes to either text or hatch lines had no effect. And I can reproduce the problem, with Windows 7, 64-bit and Inkscape 0.92.2

But let me ask, what is your goal with this? See my screenshot of the results, and notice the bounding boxes. Also you can see where I've pulled some of the resulting objects apart. Is that actually your goal -- to achieve these many pieces of the text?

Just looking at it, one might get the impression that your goal might be to have the text filled with the hatch lines. And if that's the case, Division is not the best approach anyway. Instead, you might consider converting the hatch lines to pattern, and filling the text with the pattern.

Or if your goal is the little sections of text, you could try Cut Path instead of Division. With Cut Path, you'll end up with open segements of paths, which you'd have to manually close with new segments. For some reason, I don't see the distortion with Cut Path.

grep · Postby **grep** » Tue Jan 30, 2018 8:45 am

Hi Brynn,

Thanks for taking the time to test on your machine. Is it a bug then?

Yes, I wanted the text to be filled with hatched lines.

If I do the pattern technique (which I tried), I don't see the hatch anymore when I do Display Mode > Outline. The goal is to use it for laser engraving.

I found this neat extension https://github.com/KnoxMakers/KM-Laser which does hatch lines pretty easily.

Moini · Postby **Moini** » Tue Jan 30, 2018 8:52 am

Or use the eggbot extensions, they also have hatch options (or the gcodetools extensions which also do - each a different type).
see https://github.com/evil-mad/EggBot/tree ... ape_driver and Extensions > Gcodetools > Area

Postby **brynn** » Wed Jan 31, 2018 5:37 am

If you need to cut (engrave) on the hatch lines, then converting to pattern won't work. As far as I know, most cutters need a path to cut on. And converting to a pattern makes it....well, sort of a raster object, if not in fact, a raster object.

So it sounds like you need actual paths.

(No, it doesn't sound like a bug, since Lazur doesn't see the distortion. At least not an easy bug to identify and reproduce.)

However..... Ok, I'm curious how the laser will know whether to cut or engrave on a particular path. If you use either Division or Cut Path, the actual paths to be cut will be like those I dragged away in my screenshot above. So I'm thinking you somehow need 2 separate paths - one for cutting and one for engraving.

Is that correct? Or is the whole thing going to be engraved, and nothing will be cut completely out?

grep · Postby **grep** » Wed Jan 31, 2018 8:52 am

@Moini
The KM-laser extension I am using is based on the Eggbot extension. I prefer it as it is less stuff to install on my computer, as I am not planning to draw on eggs anytime soon

@brynn Yes, only engraving, I have no plan in cutting with this machine.

Postby **brynn** » Wed Jan 31, 2018 9:20 am

@brynn Yes, only engraving, I have no plan in cutting with this machine.

In that case, I would suggest trying Path menu > Cut Path. After that, you'll have to "manually" replace the hatch lines. It's not so hard to do.

I was going to make a screenshot, but I think a video would be better. I'll be back shortly.

Moini · Postby **Moini** » Wed Jan 31, 2018 9:26 am

You can copy just the hatch extension from the repo I linked... It's going to do exactly what you need.

Postby **brynn** » Wed Jan 31, 2018 9:36 am

I'll still post the video, since it's already done.

https://inkscapecommunity.com/jd/vids/en.mp4

I'm sure there's a keyboard shortcut for that command to join selected nodes with a new segment. See Help menu > Key and Mouse Reference. You might be able to select a few paths and nodes, and close a few paths at once. It doesn't always work (sometimes joins the wrong nodes together), but sometimes it does, and definitely worth a try.

grep · Postby **grep** » Thu Feb 01, 2018 12:15 pm

@Brynn thanks! Waw this is quite time consuming, worth it for a custom hatch, but in my case, the hatch extension will suffice

@moini Ok! Have you tried to reproduced the error?

Moini · Postby **Moini** » Thu Feb 01, 2018 10:53 pm

No, I was focused on helping you to find a workaround. I know there are bugs that are related to the precision of Boolean operations. Probably something in your settings is different from Lazur's - if you really want to know, you could exchange settings files and test again.

Anyway, division is not the best way to achieve hatches, as it produces a double line, instead of a single line - good that Brynn thought of asking you about the purpose

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