quick question for Gary...

[parrotlady]

Gary, I promise this will be quick... On both circles/mandelas that you helped me with, everything worked well except the outer circle... It cuts out very choppy.. it is like a bunch of lines connected with nodes (think of an octagon with more sides). Do I have to do something special to the circles like convert them to curves or something? I am quite sure it is the drawing versus my table, because other circles that I didnt draw cut out fine.

thanks so much!

April

[SignTorch Vector Art]

I only see a few nodes there in both the DXF and CMX

so, I suspect you may have edited it in corel then exported a dxf and corel created a zillion tiny line segments around it

or if there's only a dozen or so facets, that'd mean the arcs got converted to lines somehow

if you can import the original dxf straight into your cutting software it should work

or if you can, just replace the circle with a new one in your cutting software

it's hard to get a good clean dxf out of corel, the only affordable solution I know of is DXF Tools, although I'm not sure how well that works...

what cutting software are you using?

[parrotlady]

Hi Gary, thanks for your reply. I am using Torchmate CAD. When I draw a circle in their software it cuts fine.. I did this yesterday to be sure. I think that I may have just missed a step in Corel.. For all the other drawings, I import the image if it is a clipart, put a transparancy over it, place the nodes on the object, select them all, convert to curves, make sure they are cusp nodes, then edit the curves sometimes making a node smooth. I am not sure if that is the "right way" or not. I didnt do that with the circle.. I drew it and that was it, so maybe because I didnt convert to curves it saw it as lines? As far as exporting, I just save and export like you told me to. I will take a picture of the cut today to show you. keep in mind that i spent many o' hour grinding the node points already, but you can still see that it sucks.

Thanks so much

April

[SignTorch Vector Art]

hmmm, interesting, I don't know that corel translates cusp nodes or circles any differently than smooth nodes or ordinary curves. Let me know if it makes any difference. I'm curious whether the errant circle has a few nodes or a whole bunch.