Friend wants a V-carving of USC logo

[Jim Underwood]

A friend wants me to create a v-carving of the gamecock logo. I'm manually creating the vectors right now, and it might take a while.

In order to keep design time down, it would be nice if I had a program that would create vectors from BMP file.

It also occurs to me that some of you may already have a DXF...
Any "givers" out there?:confused:

....OR suggestions on how to create the vectors more quickly... I'm working with ArtCAM so importing quite a few formats is easy...

[Eric Mims]

artcam can do that.. 'convert bmp to vector'.

[Jim Underwood]

Hmmm.. well I've tried it before, and the results were a bit messy. Perhaps 2010 has gotten better?

I'll give it a whirl and let you know what happened.

[james mcgrew]

i have them!! aspire has bitmap to vector function

[Keith Outten]

Jim,

Did you try to find the logo at any of the logo web sites like brands of the world?
.

[Angie Orfanedes]

I did one for my son-in-law a few months ago. I think I pulled the logo from the Univ South Carolina web site. I used VCarvePro - tried to upload the file here, but it is not an allowed format. I'll see if your email address is on your website - if so, I'll try to send it to you.
Angie

[Gene Crain]

A friend wants me to create a v-carving of the gamecock logo. I'm manually creating the vectors right now, and it might take a while.

In order to keep design time down, it would be nice if I had a program that would create vectors from BMP file.

It also occurs to me that some of you may already have a DXF...
Any "givers" out there?:confused:

....OR suggestions on how to create the vectors more quickly... I'm working with ArtCAM so importing quite a few formats is easy...

...well if you were a dawg fan i have what u need...

go dawgs!

sorry jim/james

[Jim Underwood]

Gene, who said I'm a USC fan?:D

I practically live in the Bulldogs backyard, so I suppose defacto, I'm a UGA fan... although I have to admit my wife is much more apt to turn on the game than I am- not to mention she's a graduate.....(and I'm not.) But I'm just not that into watching guys chase a ball around the field... (Isn't that what dogs do? :confused: Fetch Boy! :D)

Seriously here's the result of ArtCAM's conversion utility- problematic at best. I'm much better off creating my own vectors than trying to clean up and modify that mess of nodes and disconnected loops.

[Jim Underwood]

James and Angie,
Please do send me anything you've got via the email section of my profile. I've downloaded the logo off of a Google image search and I'm tediously applying vectors manually...

Keith, I did a search on the website you mention but NADA on that USC gamecock logo..

[Eric Mims]

there should be a function in artcam to reduce the amount of colors in a bitmap. do that first, either in artcam or photoshop. Typically you should be able to make it 2 color, black and white which will help.. usually you can adjust the threshold between where black becomes white.. that way you can do the bmp->vector a couple times to isolate out different areas very precisely.

[james mcgrew]

the usc logo is held tightly by the univ of sc. we recently provided the millwork for the renovation of the williams brice stadium and had to find a licensed (by usc) company to provide the block "C" logos

send me an email address, it is pretty easy in aspire

[Jim Underwood]

the usc logo is held tightly by the univ of sc. we recently provided the millwork for the renovation of the williams brice stadium and had to find a licensed (by usc) company to provide the block "C" logos

James,
That's pretty standard for any collegiate logo... Have you ever considered getting a collegiate license? We are working on getting a logo product licensed for UGA... You have to jump through a lot of hoops...
You can always email me through my profile page. I hate to stick an email out here, because the 'bots pick it right up, and then you're inundated with spam...

Oh wait, I can do it this way.. send it to: jimunder at colemancabinets dot com.

Eric, thanks for another tip. I'll reduce the number of colors on this and see if it's any better. Even if it does a better outline, I'll still have a zillion nodes to clean up... Any tips on how to clear that up?

[james mcgrew]

we have two camaster owners who have the license here in columbia, i got enough on my plate!!

sending file

[Jim Underwood]

You can have too much to do? Usually that only happens with my personal projects..

Hey Eric, reducing the number of colors worked pretty well. I ran it down to three colors in steps using artcams reduce color function, then turned the pixel tolerance to three pixels in the bmp to vector function... I still have the zillion node problem though...

[Jim Underwood]

Whoof. I got a pretty good vectors on my last try, but it still needs refinement. I'm about 3 hours into this, and I still have a ways to go.
I made the spacing between nodes about 40 pixels, and it sure did clean up a lot of excessive points... I should play with some extreme values to see how the various settings affect it.
I have the outline, the feet, the head, ane one wing cleaned up and ready. Gotta keep moving. I hope to cut this tomorrow... Got the CNC sitting idle until a designer puts a job in the shop.

Eric if you have any more good tips about cleaning up ArtCAMs vectors, I'm all ears.

[james mcgrew]

jim check the edited version of the dxf i just sent

jim

[Jim Underwood]

Sorry I didn't get to that file til this morning Jim- but I'll definitely check it out. I wound up using my own vectors for this. It took me approximately 8 hours to prep it for output. I'm fairly pleased with the outcome. The vectors are clean and sharp.

I'm running the second program in 3/4 MDF right now, to test the letter depth.. I'll put pix up in a few......

When the "client" approves, we'll mill it in Cherry.

[Jim Underwood]

As promised..
There's a picture of the vectors after cleanup. Thanks to Eric who provided the tip to reduce the colors, and the impetus to explore the vector producing part of the program, I was able to use the vectors already created by the program. It still took a while to get them prepped even so...

And here are two test cuts in MDF. Perhaps not as deep as it should be, but I'm tired of messing with this... Maybe later I'll widen the distance between vectors to get them a bit deeper, and do something about the too deep cuts in behind the leg and below the neck...

Anyway, thanks for the help and the moral support. I'll post pix of the final outcome too...

[Jim Underwood]

And... in cherry: