Drawing specific parts?

[TJS]

So I am trying to draw a block off plate for an auto application. I was given the original part where the plate would bolt to. I traced it with a pencil on white paper. Then brought it into Inkscape as a jpg and tried to trace it. I got double lines. I played with snapping nodes and such as well as filling in the trace and then trying to manually create the part on top of that. I seemed to get further and further away. I probably can use my radius gouges and caliper to draw this but I want to see if the trace bitmap would work.
Or to be symmetrical just draw one side and duplicate it for the other side. Then attach the two separate mirrored objects.?

[TJS]

Here is the part.

[weldguy]

I have tried to do the same in the past and have found 9 times out of 10 your better to just start drawing it on your own rather than auto trace it and try to clean that up. Looks like simple egr block off plate, I would use Fusion 360 for this, could do this in 1 minute in Fusion. If you had some dims I would be happy to draw this for you. Do you use Fusion 360?

[SegoMan DeSigns]

I use CorelDraw16 but I will scan the part, load it then lay an oval over it and adjust as needed. For checking uniformity copy / past the object, change the outline colors then mirror / adjust as needed.

[TJS]

All I have is Inkscape. Thanks.

[ROKCRLER]

For inkscape, i would paint the flange solid with sharpie/paint/whatever, place it on the scanner bed with the lid open and scan it.
The double lines, youre probably using edge detection.

What ive done for parts like this one, copy the image to inkscape, scale it to a known side like the holes or total width then draw 5 circles, two for the bolt holes and two for the the outside flange radius and one for the center radius. Connect the lines and combine, then difference the bolt holes.

TJ Flange.JPG (34.65 KiB) Viewed 1375 times

TJ Flange.JPG (34.65 KiB) Viewed 1375 times

You really should try QCad.. its pretty easy for parts like this.... and free...

[adbuch]

All I have is Inkscape. Thanks.

This one is very quick to manually trace. Use the Bezier tool to draw straight lines, then the node tool to drag the segments out to match your drawing. Then add the two circles. The last step would be to scale to the correct size. You can take a measurement - say between the centers of the two holes - and scale your Inkscape drawing to match that center-to-center distance.

Other options would be to draw from scratch, or auto trace and edit out the double lines.

David

[TJS]

I must be doing something wrong. I got a big x when importing the jpg. I then did a trace on the big x and it seemed to work but I know it was not correct. I have the newest version of inkscape.

[TJS]

Ok David. I went back and did the trace and tried your process with the bezier tool and then the nodes. Getting lines to bend where I want them is difficult for me I guess. Also when I drew the circles for the holes and put them over the traced holes I had to put them at the bottom of the stack so I can remove the traced holes. This is what I have.

[adbuch]

I must be doing something wrong. I got a big x when importing the jpg. I then did a trace on the big x and it seemed to work but I know it was not correct. I have the newest version of inkscape.

[adbuch]

20230515_213645.jpg
Ok David. I went back and did the trace and tried your process with the bezier tool and then the nodes. Getting lines to bend where I want them is difficult for me I guess. Also when I drew the circles for the holes and put them over the traced holes I had to put them at the bottom of the stack so I can remove the traced holes. This is what I have.

This looks pretty good from what I can tell from your photo of your screen. If you click on the imported image and send it to the bottom of the z stack, then you will have all of your holes and traced path on top so you can see it. Here is how I used the node handles to adjust the traced path to match your image. Also you can use the "Make selected nodes smooth" tool to make nice smooth transitions from your curves to your straight line path segments.

David

Here is the one I came up with from my manual trace as shown above. As has been mentioned, there are other programs that would make it much easier to draw this one and have it be symmetrical. But for Inkscape I think the manual trace is the easiest and quickest method.

block off plate from manual trace.svg

(358.15 KiB) Downloaded 59 times

block off plate from manual trace.svg

(358.15 KiB) Downloaded 59 times

[adbuch]

I don't use QCad, but Design Edge does pretty much the same thing. AutoCad, CorelDraw, Fusion 360, etc. would work as well. This is how I did it using Design Edge. It may not functionally be any better than the Inkscape manual trace, but it is symmetric.

David

block off plate from DE.dxf

(1.29 KiB) Downloaded 47 times

block off plate from DE.dxf

(1.29 KiB) Downloaded 47 times

[TJS]

This is great. What I do for the bolt holes (YMMV) is I find the hole spacing with a caliper and sometimes some pin gauges but in this case I am making the holes a few thous bigger. I then measure up from the very bottom edge. I then create a rectangle with those dimensions. Then I place the rectangle over the part from the bottom edge (if snapping is on it will snap the rect to the bottom edge and center). I then take my circles and snap to the center of the circle to the corners of the rectangle. Thanks for all this everybody. This is cool stuff. It is a great conglomeration of ideas to get to the same goal.
Thanks again.
T.J.

[adbuch]

This is great. What I do for the bolt holes (YMMV) is I find the hole spacing with a caliper and sometimes some pin gauges but in this case I am making the holes a few thous bigger. I then measure up from the very bottom edge. I then create a rectangle with those dimensions. Then I place the rectangle over the part from the bottom edge (if snapping is on it will snap the rect to the bottom edge and center). I then take my circles and snap to the center of the circle to the corners of the rectangle. Thanks for all this everybody. This is cool stuff. It is a great conglomeration of ideas to get to the same goal.
Thanks again.
T.J.

That's a great process for scaling T.J.
Yes - I agree - this is indeed very cool stuff! And this was great practice for the next time.

David

[TJS]

Here is how I do my bolt spacing. YMMV.
Found the bolt spacing 2.250". Made a rectangle the same width. The height here did not really matter because it is in the center of the part.
I then enabled snapping and moved the rectangle into the part. It centered X and Y. Next post.

[TJS]

Then moved the circles to snap the center of the circles to the corner of the boxes.

[TJS]

Then delete the rectangle. Make circles object to path then group the whole thing.

[acourtjester]

TJ another neat tool in Inkscape is the Align and Distribute, it helps to center items or place item with equal distance. Info starts on page 192.
https://inkscape-manuals.readthedocs.io ... atest/pdf/

[TJS]

Great thanks Tom. I will check it out in depth.
T.J.

[adbuch]

I agree! I really don't use Inkscape all that much for those sorts of tasks, but I have tried it and it works well. Tom - thanks for posting that additional information.

David