CNC Mandalas

[Mooselake]

I spent a lot of time offsetting and node editing while making chip carving designs from a beginner how-to book that was intended for pencils and actual chip carving knives. It would be nice if VCarve got the concept of enclosed spaces that aren't closed shapes. Estlcam kind of does but it's automatic shape finder still takes a lot of manual cleanup. For a simple example think a tic tac toe board, the center square is a fully enclosed shape, but not an SVG closed shape. I haven't gotten around to upgrading to V12 but haven't seen any indication that it's any different.

[Mooselake]

I spent a lot of time offsetting and node editing while making chip carving designs from a beginner how-to book that was intended for pencils and actual chip carving knives. It would be nice if VCarve got the concept of enclosed spaces that aren't closed shapes. Estlcam kind of does but it's automatic shape finder still takes a lot of manual cleanup. For a simple example think a tic tac toe board, the center square is a fully enclosed shape, but not an SVG closed shape. I haven't gotten around to upgrading to V12 but haven't seen any indication that it's any different.

/probably OT/ To add to the fun Vectric's offset command gets carried away with making unnecessary new nodes, and their node simplifier (forget the actual name) changes shapes just enough that close ones can overlap, as an advantage that teaches you more about node editing :) . You don't want to look too close at VCarve's generated gcode after offsetting, it's ugly. I've been running it through GCodeClean (md8n, github) for larger jobs. While it's an extra step it's worth checking out. Among other things GGodeClean converts line segments to G2/G3 arcs where possible, changes retracts to G0s, and does the same for plunges from safe height to almost the surface, and other fun stuff. The author is working on adding TSP travel move optimizations, they work but the interface to use them needs improvement. And of course test it first before doing anything important or on expensive stock

[ArtF]

Always been my problem with that too, enclosed shapes. It'd be nice to have a button to make a grid
divided in 4 as 4 closed shapes unto themselves.. Mandala maker does that with an algorithm that uses graph
theory to separate things into closed shapes as I had the same trouble. Of course, it could be just me
not knowing how to do that...

Art

[BMeyers]

... I've been running it through GCodeClean (md8n, github) for larger jobs. While it's an extra step it's worth checking out. Among other things GGodeClean converts line segments to G2/G3 arcs where possible, changes retracts to G0s, and does the same for plunges from safe height to almost the surface, and other fun stuff. The author is working on adding TSP travel move optimizations, they work but the interface to use them needs improvement. And of course test it first before doing anything important or on expensive stock

hat tip re gCodeClean