I engrave a good amount of knives with full coverage scrollwork and have run into an issue where the knife mfg is very inconsistent in where they put their logo on anodized knives. It varies in all directions and enough that I either need to find a dynamic, non-destructive solution where I can leave the entire scrollwork design as-is and be able to position an area that will not be engraved, or quit doing them because it just costs too much time fiddling with the design constantly to avoid engraving over the existing marked logo.
It’s probably a little more complicated than just not wanting an area engraved because I frame out the entire knife and would need to be able to move that too, but moving framing is simpler than moving hundreds of lines and worse, re-adding the design where the previously unengraved area existed, but if there was such a way to do this I could probably work it out.
Any ideas? Would this be a feature request that would have a chance of implementation, or nah?
Let me know if I didn’t explain this clearly. Thank you…
The simplest way to achieve this, if I understand the problem, is to use the cut shapes tool. Create your entire design without a “hole” for the logo. Save this as a template for future knives.
Create a “box or other closed shape” that matches the shape and size of the logo. Place the box over your design where the cutout is required. With your design in “Fill Mode” select your entire design, then shift select the cutout. Go to Tools>Cut Shapes. Select the area that was cut out and delete.
Thank you for this. That is an interesting feature! I’ve been so used to doing boolean operations in various software over the years that I hadn’t even looked for something like that.
I’m going to look further into that tool because it’s possible I could make it work. It’s not what I had in my mind but you use the tools that are available…
What I need to achieve is in the screenshots below. It probably doesn’t look like much of a variance but it’s enough to be problematic with the design. As you can see there’s framing that I’d need to move also, but with your idea it seems having the full design perhaps on a tool layer and then just copying to my engraving layer, doing the cut and some node adjustments, it could be feasible.
Of course, it would be far better if they could just locate the logo in the same place every time, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. I can get 4 of the same knife and each one is different, requiring changes in my design. Ugh!
Ah, I see. I actually did the framing (rectangle). It’s an anodized knife with their logo so I frame around it to make it look like it’s meant to be there instead of just having the scrollwork float around it.
Unfortunately the logo can be to the left/right by up to 4-5mm and up and down about 2 (sometimes it’s low enough that the framing goes through the logo a bit… yuck).
