Hatch Patterns in Ezcad 2

[Terry Wade]

I have a potential client that asked me if I could engrave the pattern that he has engraved on one of his pistols onto the blade of his knife. I'm have issues figuring this out in ezcad. My question is do I have to create the pattern in some other software and import it into ezcad or what is the best way to do this? I see online a lot of people using Adobe Illustrator, is this what I will have to do to accomplish this? If so I guess I will have to learn a new software.

[Bill George]

You would need to either scan in or take a digital picture of the design into a graphics program like Corel Draw and trace it out. Lightburn is suppose to be able to trace also, but I have never tried, yet. I just tried in Lightburn and it did a wonderful job!

It was a solid picture black on white bird and this is a Snip of the Trace.
Bird.JPG

[John Lifer]

I wouldn't try and create much in ezcad.... I find it difficult to work with myself. If you are going to use a fiber laser, I'd learn another program and import into excad OR just load up lightburn and see if it will suffice. I expect it will. As George said, you need to scan or import the image of what you are recreating and then redraw or maybe trace.....Or you can send to several folks and get them to redraw for you... Not usually too expensive, $25 to $50

[Kev Williams]

Among other things I see you use Corel X8, a couple of Chinese glass lasers and a 50w fiber-- Question, are you not already using Corel to do your graphic work before DXF'ing it to your fiber?

I ask because, I ONLY use EzCad to engrave the 'final product' AFTER all design work is done in Corel. The only 'figuring out' I do in EzCad is the hatch fill and engraving parameters. Occasionally I use the OFFSET function in EzCad, but virtually NO other editing of any kind. All that I do in Corel. Same for jobs that go to my Triumph C02. Any editing needed, I do in Corel and just re-upload it...

Are you able to take a picture of the design, or, is the pattern on the pistol in a position where you could set it onto a printer scanner and scan it in to Corel? I've done this several times; copy the pattern, bring it onto the Corel screen, lock the image, go into 'wireframe' mode, then just hand-trace the design with the mouse, then fix it afterwards. Sometimes CorelTRACE will surprise me...

Anyway, the short version, is to simply do as much as possible with Corel, and ONLY use EzCad for doing the engraving

[David Buchhauser]

I have a potential client that asked me if I could engrave the pattern that he has engraved on one of his pistols onto the blade of his knife. I'm have issues figuring this out in ezcad. My question is do I have to create the pattern in some other software and import it into ezcad or what is the best way to do this? I see online a lot of people using Adobe Illustrator, is this what I will have to do to accomplish this? If so I guess I will have to learn a new software.

A photo of the hatch pattern you wish to duplicate would be helpful. Inkscape is great for creating hatching and it is free.

CorelDraw will also do hatching. You can save in vector format from either program and import to your laser software.

As was previously mentioned, you could also import an image of the hatching (jpeg) and manually trace.

David

CorelDraw hatch fill.jpgInkscape hatch fill.jpg

[Kev Williams]

One of the first things I did with my first 30w fiber, that I thought couldn't be done, was to engrave this grid pattern on a pistol grip. WHY I thought it I couldn't do it was because I didn't rotate it, just engraved it flat, and I was VERY surprised at how well it engraved even down the arc slopes, quite a bit out of focus--
grip1.jpg
grip2.jpg
as you can see, the 'diamonds' grew into 'squares' as the slope of the arc "artificially" stretched the design. There is software to adjust for this, but obviously I don't have any -- The customer was pleased

this is the design that did the engraving in EzCad-
grip3.jpg grip4.jpg
- nothing real special about it, I just drew up the diamond grid in Corel, sized it to fit the grip and made the grid lines about a mm wide, exported the design as a DXF, imported, did my best to align and focus and prayed for the best

THIS design was easy to create myself, complicated designs, and especially trying to replicate a design, is going to take some sort of combination of photography, scanning, hand and/or software tracing, fixing corners and bumps & stuff, but it's all do-able with patience.

One problem I get A LOT from customer's artwork is what 'graphics designers' (and I'm using the term loosely...) will do in Illustrator that just makes life hell for engravers, which is: They'll create big fat rectangles and other shapes that are actually just single lines that they make fat by simply outlining them fat. Another is they keep stacking shapes onto other shapes onto other shapes onto other shapes- just to get the different colors they're going after. BOTH of these ways of creating graphics will PRINT WHAT YOU CAN SEE ON SCREEN to a color printer fabulously! BUT a frickin' laser and it's program doesn't care about the colors, they only care about THE LINES--! And I'm not smart enough to know the 'technical' differences or their names, but in my mind, a blotch of lines made into pretty colors, even if created by using 'lines', is essentially the same as 'bitmap' art, whereas the lines themselves are 'vector art'. Color printers just print 'what they see', everything under the colors, doesn't matter to printers. But LASERS require specific closed shapes with at least 5 X-Y coordinates- 2 of them that are identical (the start and end points) in order to do their job, which is to fill a closed shape with engraved lines. When what LOOKS like a rectangle with 4 sides is actually a single line with only 2 coordinates, a laser can engrave that single line if told to, but it cannot create the thick black rectangle you see... When this problem happens, you need to simply trace the design to create your own closed shapes. CorelTRACE can do this, not very well sometimes, but really good AI art will have nice sharp, smooth edges, and taking as big a screenshot as you can of the artwork tends to trace very nicely. And what's not-so-nicely usually isn't too bad to fix. VectorMagic is okay, better than CorelTRACE but I still don't care for it. Gravostyle also has a tracing program, not perfect either. But being able to trace any type of bitmap art pretty much requires a vector tracing/digitizing program....

[Terry Wade]

Thanks for the input guy's I didn't think to use the corel draw that I already have. It's been so long since anyone asked me for anything much more than a name, initials, or a number it just slipped my mind. I will definitely sharpen up the corel draw skills.