Too many start points

[wickedinhere]

Ok i have this fish file that cuts great no problem. I put some initials in it and save it then put it in sheetcam. Sheetcam then shows 1000 starting points it looks like the drawing is made up of small broken lines instead of solid lines. I cant share the file because i bought it from dxf.graphics Please help.

[beefy]

Sent you a PM.

Try this. In Sheetcam go to Options / Application Options / Drawing Import (tab) / Import Link Tolerance. Increase the value there and see if this "stitches" the open lines together.

I think when I import a dxf into Coreldraw to modify it, I sometimes get a lot of individual lines instead of closed curves. See if you can select a peice of the drawing and pull it away, if so then it's imported in "peices". Use the back button to put the peice back. Try using the Smart Fill tool to create a new single object from the drawing. This sometimes works, and if it does then delete the imported drawing.

Consider my PM if non of this works and you don't get it sorted.

Keith.

[wickedinhere]

Yes i can pull a small line away its made up of small lines. The sheetcam trick didnt work. I have never used the smart fill in corel how does that work? I tried messing with it but dont know exactly how it works.

[beefy]

I haven't delved into the dxf import options in Coreldraw but perhaps there's some setting in there which will prevent the dxf being imported as individual open lines and curves.

Keith

[beefy]

.

[wickedinhere]

I tried join curves and the weld function and that didn't work, contacted the guy i got the file from and he sent me the file in a cmx and i took that and put my initials in the fish and exported as a dxf and that worked.

[muzza]

I aslo wonder if there's any commands in Coreldraw to join nodes within a certain distance of each other. That would be very useful in situations like yours.
Keith

This is from Gamelord who helped out on a previous thread

Murray


Re: Corel x5 Help Please
by Gamelord ? Fri Nov 30, 2012 6:48 am

There is a way to easily do this and it works nearly 99% of the time.

What you will want to use is the "Join Curves" tool. Go to the pulldown menu "Arrange" and then select the very bottom option "Joni Curves". This will open up the "Join Curves" toolbox docker on the right side of the screen.

You have a bunch of options, the drop down box is how you want to join all the nodes. If the drawing has mostly curved lines, you will probably want to select Bezier Curve. If the nodes are all very close together and form continuous lines (like your drawing) you will probably want to select Extend. The gap tolerance is how far apart you want two nodes to be connected together...so if you have nodes that are 1" apart and want all nodes that are 1" apart to be joined, put in 1", with this drawing, all nodes are pretty much on top of each other so I would drop the tolerance down to around 1 mm or even .5mm if it gets ugly...

Radius can be whatever you want it to be, for 1" nodes, you may want a nice curve between the two so a larger radius may be great, for this drawing a very small - or near zero radius would probably be best. With the Extend option, radius is not used.

So, once you get your settings done, just select either all of the drawing, or just parts and then click the "Apply" button, it should join all the nodes that are within the tolerance set.

I set it to 1.0 mm, select the entire drawing and everything connected the way it should and made one solid closed outline (with the exception of one node down on the bottom right side by the ram's horn, it must have been further apart than 1.0mm, once I connected that node, it became a closed object). If you try this and it goes crazy, just hit "Undo" and try it again with some different settings or with a smaller chunk of the drawing.

Hope this helps.

[Gamelord]

Yup, join curves will work. Its not the import function in Corel that does it, but the way the file was exported from the original program that breaks all the segments apart. I think this is done in a version of cad as some cad programs can not draw a curve, but instead draw many small segments to form the curve. When exported, each segment becomes a start point.

[beefy]

Thanks for that info.

Keith.

[SignTorch Vector Art]

you might try select all, then combine, then select all the nodes, then use join-nodes

and possibly experiment with turning auto-reduce-nodes on or off during dxf import

and try exporting to dxf version 10 or earlier to eliminate splines, I haven't practiced sheetcam much, but I have seen it go crazy turning splines into thousands of points, I don't remember if they came out as joined or separate segments

I do believe that corel exports segments to dxf as drawn, if adjacent end nodes are connected in corel then they will be connected in the dxf export. Adjacent (but overlapping) nodes that are not joined in corel will export to dxf with a break between them.

I also think I remember thinking that sheetcam expects adjacent segments that should be connected to be consecutive in the dxf, or else it will connect a few here and a few there and then not connect those results at their endpoints, and or if the connection tolerance is too large it will connect the next not necessarily the closest segment, which can cause all sorts of jibberish, in corel the only way to be sure that adjacent segments are in consecutive order is to join all adjacent nodes to form all continuous curves

again, I'm mostly speculating with respect to sheetcam based on (limited) memory of my past confusion, totally not sure exactly.....