Continuing the discussion from DMS March 2016 Show and Tell:
What was scale error amount?
Same error on both laser cutters?
What file formats did you have to convert between from source material to printing? From a CAD file to svg? Have you examined the svg xml?
Sometimes the Full Spectrum Laser will scale things if the page size option in the print dialog isn’t set to the ProLF 36x24 or if other options are enabled like scale to fit page. The Lasersaur will sometimes scale SVG files that are exported from CAD applications. I suspect there’s some metadata in there mucking things up.
If anyone is interested in trying this out, there’s an alternative web interface for the Lasersaur that’s targeted at open source laser cutters in general, no just the Lasersaur. It has raster support too.
I will try to be around the space this evening if anyone wants to discuss it in person.
I’m using Draftsight, which natively does .DWG files (AutoCAD). It can export to a dizzying array of .DXF formats or .SVG . I’ve been using .SVG, which seems to interpret at something like 2/3 scale. The awkward handoff between CAD on the laptop, .SVG export, Google drive, one of the laser desktops, inkscape, then the laser control app(s) does not much help. I’ve had issues with both the FSL and the lasersaur.
I think the next step is to see if I can find a flavour of .DXF that inkscape likes since I just need the vectors to some through cleanly.
I can probably make it up there this evening. Doubt there’s any more donor material around, however…
I have had success with early versions of DXF standard, such as R12; however, I have found that Inkscape will occasional need a factor to import my files to the right scale (usually for me it is 25.4).
Can you post the svg that had the issue? And what units you are using in draftsight?
.DWG file - units should be in inches.
.SVG file - note all that disgusting whitespace
Weird thing is that the scale factor has typically been some ~135% from SVG.
Looks like you encountered DraftSight’s helpful default Fit to Paper size checkbox, you always have to uncheck the box and select 1:1
Your SVG was 70% the size it should be, after exporting the same DWG file in draftsight using 1:1 scale it produced an SVG the correct size
(Note that stroke width is 0.010 inches, the width in inkscape is width of line object including ends of stroke, which is why it reads 3.680 instead of 3.670)
Thanks. Makes sense on the full-size layout. But not so much the piece part I did last week - which was standalone and would have scaled up to fit a standard A sheet. But maybe I just deleted everything but the one piece, exported to svg, then discarded the file without saving - likely inheriting the original bounds and fudge-factor scaling.
DWIM has its place, but this wasn’t one of them.
Will have to see if this effects the export to SVG option I’ve been using … or maybe I just use the print functionality.
I did CAD files in Cubify in inches. Then in my drawing i made a large empty sheet (24x36 in for the lasersaur) and put all my pieces in there as a 1:1 scale. I then changed the drawing units to “mm” and exported as a DXF. I imported as a dxf into inkscape and saved as an SVG. I made sure to open as a 90 dpi file in importing in the Lasersaur. Some of my splines were too complex and inkscape wouldnt import the file correctly, and there would be missing stuff. To fix this I did all my line coloring within the cad drawing and saved as a PDF. When i imported the PDF in Inkscape, it basically came in as an image so all I could do was reposition it. Which is why I did the coloring in the drawing before export. Once it was in Inkscape I saved as a SVG and everything went fine as before
Lasersaur is 24*48. Not sure if that’s a typo or not but I do know that if your document is smaller it has a chance to change the scale of your file
The file was at 24*36 because I was originally doing cuts on the FSL, but because of slow cutting I switched back to the Lasersaur. Even with other different size document pages, I didn’t have any scaling issues, and my design had tolerances on the order of 0.1-0.2 mm for interference fits. If I deviated from the below, I had scaling issues:
