Hi all… I’ve created a bee so I want to be able to shade in and engrave the black bands that lie round the body, whilst still having the outline a different depth.
I’ve tried to join the shapes to the body shape, but it doesn’t infill.. I’ve tried closing paths,… joining nodes to the whole shape, grouping different bits, ungrouping bits… auto joining different shapes… The whole bit looks like this…
Preview looks like this…
Thanks for any help!
Hx
Probably not closed shapes, upload your file here so we can take a look at it.
Under Window tab, select Filled / Smooth. then it will Fill (when you select Fill) in your drawing if it is a closed line object.
Any of these straight lines are not closed shapes. The far wing isn’t even connected. It can’t fill something with a hole in it’s containing bounds.
You also cannot attach a 2nd line to an existing line.
Might want to post it and let someone fix it for you, then you’ll understand how to do it.
The fundamental problem: it’s a drawing of a bee, not a collection of shapes suitable for laser engraving.
The doc explains about open & closed shapes:
A shape is closed when it is a complete, continuous loop whose start and end points are the same
One consequence of a “loop” is that the nodes along the path can join only two lines. If you think of the laser following the loop around the shape, what would it do at a node where two lines branch out ahead of it?
The red circles mark where three lines meet at (about) the same point: the lines for the band across the bee’s abdomen cannot join the abdomen’s outline. You could duplicate the whole perimeter and trim away everything outside the band, join what’s left to the lines forming the band, and get a closed loop around the band.
Similarly, the purple ovals mark places on the leg where you could duplicate the short section shared by two parts of the leg, then join it to the lower part to form a closed loop.
The blue circles show places were the left wing is a sketch, rather than a closed shape: more duplication and node editing will be in order.
Going from a sketch to a laser-able design can require a lot of work!
sometimes using “offset” (alt+o) to create closed shapes is easier.
I am not sure exactly what you are going for but I use that to make closed shapes from line drawings all the time.
Hi, I’m not wanting to fill the wings. Just the bands going across the body.
Cheers,
I’ve gone back in a changed the bands across the body to closed shapes (well tried to). I might just delete them and then put them in as whole shapes as given by lightburn.
I’mma try this. I’ll let you know.
Notice how the shapes generated by the Offset tool look in comparison with the original sketch: everywhere the sketch had three- or four-line intersections now have adjoining closed paths.
You can put those paths on different layers to get either Line or Fill results as needed.
This worked with the exception that I used ‘fill outer shapes’ on the offset menu.
Thank you… and to everybody.
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