Craft Edge

I tackled my first "print & cut" project last night. I downloaded a free house from MicroTactix. I downloaded it from here.I'm pleased with how it came out, but it was a fair amount of work.

I've put the SVG file for SCAL up on MediaFire, here.

I used a variation of the technique explained here.

Rather than do the tracing in Inkscape, I used GIMP.
First, open the document in GIMP. Then use the magic wand tool to select the white space. Now, invert the selection so that the shapes are selected. Clean up selection as needed. Now, convert the selection to a path. Save the path to SVG. Open the SVG in Inkscape. Import the image file into Inkscape so you can line things up. Clean up the paths as necessary.

(This next section is where I ran into trouble.) Print the image from within Inkscape. Open the SVG in SCAL. Now pay very close attention to the size of the outlines in SCAL vs the outlines in Inkscape. Cut your guide sheet. Line up the image sheet under the guide sheet. (Hopefully they will fit. The first time I cut, the cutting came out too small; I had forgotten to ensure the sizes matched up in Inkscape and SCAL.) Cut the image sheet.

Trim as needed. Assemble.

As I said, it was a fair amount of work. The image tracing doesn't come out perfect, so there is time spent cleaning that up in Inkscape. Next time I'll pay more attention to the sizing and hopefully be able to do it with the first guide cut.

- Jasen.

BRAVO! Well done!

TFS

Jasen,
Excellent work!
That was my tutorial you followed and the reason I don't print from Inkscape is that it always buggers up the size for me (some sort of Mac Inkscape->Epson bug). If you are already doing your work in GIMP, why not just print from there?
And thanks for posting this. I did not realize GIMP could save a path as an SVG. Wish Photoshop could do that!
Please do keep us posted as you continue working with this!
Kay

firstcut wrote:Jasen,
I don't print from Inkscape is that it always buggers up the size for me (some sort of Mac Inkscape->Epson bug).

I didn't realize there was a problem here. I'll have to pay closer attention next time. There definitely seemed to be some weirdness in the sizing. Glad to hear it's not just my imagination.

If you are already doing your work in GIMP, why not just print from there?

I thought printing & cutting from the same program would somehow help consistency. Plus, with an SVG file with an image layer and cut-line layer, it's easier to print the image layer directly from Inkscape.

And thanks for posting this. I did not realize GIMP could save a path as an SVG. Wish Photoshop could do that!

Photoshop can save paths to Illustrator format (.ai), and Inkscape can open .ai. There are .ai version issues, though; I don't know what the various versions of PShop save as. So if you're GIMP savvy, it may be easiest to use GIMP.

- Jasen.

Yeah, Inkscape can't open the AI files PS generates. AI can't either, they have to be exported directly to AI somehow. It's weird how it works now that everything is integrated.
It would definitely be easier to do everything in Inkscape and some people are able to, but I don't have any luck with Inkscape and my print drivers so I have to print in a separate app.

House number 2. From the same author and site as before. I was able to get everything right on the first take. Yay. The sign over the door and the two posters on the side were part of the cut. A simpler house, but had its own challenges.

There's supposed to be a couple of chimneys, but they were ridiculously small. The smaller the object, the tighter the tolerances. I feel comfortable down to about 1/8-1/16 of an inch. For really small parts, I recommend being generous on the cut line margins and then trim the flash away. The house body was off by maybe up to 1/4" in some places but it didn't really matter. The misalignment was absorbed by the assembly tabs.

SVG on Mediafire here.

- Jasen.