resizing a pattern

[Dave Stoudt]

Hi all

Maybe someone could help me out here. I would like to resize a pattern made with slots for a 1/4 inch thick stock to a 1/8 inch stock. Any ideas or suggestions?

I tried to resize the pattern in the laser software but all that did was changed the size of the cutout and not slots.

I have laser from rabbit-laser in OHio. Ray is a good guy to buy from very happywith his service.

Thanks all.........

Dave

[Len Mullin]

Dave, did you try to resize it with your printer? That's all I ever use and it works great for me, and I cut a fair amount of slotted items.
Len

[Dave Stoudt]

do you mean by reducing the size then printing it and then rescan it? Or something else, please explain if you can.

Thanks

[Mike Null]

Dave

Can you post the drawing?

[Mike Null]

Here's a link to an item by Tom Bernard of LazerBuzz fame and a member here.

http://www.laserbuzz.com/jnewsletter/index.php?option=com_jnews&act=mailing&task=view&listid=1&mailingid=191&listype=1&Itemid=999

[Steve Kelsey]

The way I do it is to select the dimension tool and add a dimension between 2 points. I then select all and drag to re-size. The dimension will adjust to give the new measurements.

[David Fairfield]

If you are just chaging the wood thickness but leaving the overall part size the same, you can't just scale down the drawing, you only want to scale down width of the slots. Use your graphics software to rescale the slots. Depending on what software you are using and how proficient you are, you may be able to do all at once, or do them one by one. Dave

[Dave Stoudt]

thanks, This was what I was looking for.

Thanks to all who posted suggestions and ideas...........

[Dave Stoudt]

well, I tried to do what Tom Bernard said in his newsletter. However, I must have done something wrong because
all it did was make the whole thing larger and the slots stayed the same. I tried to use correl 4 to make the slots larger
but all I did was screw up the whole thing. I'm new at this, so maybe I don't understand what Tom is tryiny to explain.

When you say select all do I have to go into the edit menu and scoll down and open it?, if so when I do this 3 items popup
whice one do I chose? I'm trying to do the raindeer that I found here. When I open the file and import to my laser the deer
are to big, I want to downsise them. So I resise them in my laser software. Useing 5.1 on a rabbitlaser. I using 1/8 inch baltic
ply and slots will not let me slide parts together. If I run the ply thru the beltsander and get it down to about .096 they fit good.

[Glen Monaghan]

To scale everything so that the slots fit, 1st measure a slot width. One easy way is to draw a new rectangle in an existing slot (choose one that is horizontal or vertical for simplicity) and note the rectangle/slot width. Then delete or undo to get rid of that rectangle. Open the size transformation and make sure the Proportional box is checked. Type Ctl-A, or click Edit/Select All/Objects, or drag a marquee around everything, and then click to the right of the current x value in the transformation/size box. Type the "*" character, the material thickness you want to use, a "/" character, and the slot width you measured. For your reindeer and 1/8" wood, that would be *.125/.1086, or for 3mm it would be *.118/.1086

That quickly scales everything up a bit to fit your material. If you wanted to maintain the existing size and only change the material thickness, you pretty much are stuck going in and editing nodes to widen each individual slot.

[Bruce Dorworth]

The easiest way I find to resize vectors is... use the dimension tool to measure the width of a slot. Make sure that you are using something like 3 decimal places. Select all of your vectors and then drag your corner sizing box to make everything larger. Do this until you get the dimension where you want it.

[Ronald Erickson]

I tried Bruce's method on the file and it worked perfect for 1/8" mdf. I used a slot size of .110 with a material thickness of .114 (assuming a kerf of .004). It was a tight friction fit. The tallest deer is about 6.5" tall when the slot size is .110.

I followed Bruce's directions as he described:
-Add a dimension (using the dimension tool) to one of the slots.
-Change the dimension scale to 0.0000. You may want to reposition the text to make it easier to see.
-Ctrl + A (select all) and drag a corner box a little. Turning off "snap to objects" (alt + Z) helps with dragging the size in small increments.
-Release the mouse button and the dimension updates.
-Repeat dragging and dropping the corner box until the slot width is .110 (or your material thickness minus your laser kerf)

As Glen said, if you are looking to keep the deer the same overall size as the originals, you'd have to individually change the width of each the slots to whatever material thickness you want.