I’ve brought in an SVG that is an architectural drawing - it’s a lot of individual lines. I’d like to trace the border to get a perimeter cut line (then maybe using the originals as etch lines). I’ve tried to do it in Inkscape and Lightburn, but because it’s a collection of individual lines, the offset tools generate offsets for each individual item, generating a mess. I thought about welding the whole bunch of lines, then doing an offset, but welding gives me a blank page (don’t know why that is). Rubber-banding it doesn’t work, since I want the outlines to follow the exact contours of the perimeter, not just the ‘high points’. Can I do this in Lightburn, or do I need to go back to Inkscape? And if in Inkscape, any hints on how to do it there?
Hard to tell if I’ve got a clear enough view but I think you’re dealing with individual line segments that you’re looking to join together.
If so, instead of welding try selecting all disparate components that make up the outline and then do Edit->Auto-join selected shapes. This will join the ends of the segments that are properly aligned. Once you have a closed shape you will be able to perform an outset.
If this doesn’t get you there can you upload the .lbrn here? Or if you’re not permitted then a high resolution screenshot and detail on exactly what you’re trying to do would be helpful.
Thanks for your thoughts. I’m attaching the svg. I thought about doing an auto-join, but even selecting all of the perimeter lines is a challenge. I imported the svg from a pdf, and each of the victorian brackets consists of numerous straight lines (not Bézier curves, for example), so there’s probably a few hundred lines in the perimeter. I also thought of adding a irregular polygon consisting of hundreds of connected lines, but I’d lose some detail and that doesn’t seem very elegant. I’d love to be able to “lasso” the perimeter and select all of the perimeter lines. Thanks again.
I think he meant drop any of these file types on the reply window and it will upload them for other to download.
‘jpg, jpeg, png, gif, lbrn, txt, lbset, lbrn2, csv, svg, dxf’
Some file types are not allowed, but you can rename it with a txt extension or put it on something like ‘google drive’ and drop a link here.
Nice image…
Hmmm… I did do an “upload” - don’t know why it’s inline only. Here’s a link to a shared dropbox. This ought to work. (Dropbox - 101 Chestnut Drawings - Front - 09 copy.svg - Simplify your life)
Right-click, ‘Save-as’ - it’s an SVG.
Ok, here’s my attempt. I don’t really use Inkscape very often as I tend to use CorelDRAW for most of this kind of stuff.
Here’s what I did:
- I opened your SVG in Inkscape
- Then I selected everything and increased the line thickness to 0.5mm (this is just an arbitrary figure I chose). This made the line ends visually overlap.
- I then did ‘Edit|Make Bitmap Copy’. This created a copy as a bitmap and pasted it over the top of the original vectors.
- I dragged the bitmap to an empty area and did a ‘Path|Trace Bitmap…’ on it. I didn’t change any of the parameters from the default. This gave me a bunch of vectors including (crucially) an outline.
- I broke apart the vectors and deleted everything but the outline vector.
- Export the vector as an SVG and import this into LightBurn where I could offset it.
Mine’s a bit rough and ready as I was just trying to get a proof of concept so I’m sure you’ll take a bit more care over it.
Hope this helps.
House Outline.lbrn2 (20.1 KB)
I just did it in LightBurn - Took about 5 mins to select all the outside bits, and there were about 4 lines that had to be split. I put those on their own layer (red) so I could quickly select them when done (Shift+Click layer). Offset that, then delete the inner offset (because they’re still just lines).
House.lbrn (1.2 MB)
Thanks, guys!! I thought those were the two paths to take, but I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss a shortcut. Oz - when I tried to select all of the lines, I went crazy since the brackets consist of a lot of segments and I was never clear if I was selecting contiguous lines. Did you really select each line individually, or use a combination of shift-dragging and clicking to get the segments?
Thanks again for your help As much as I enjoy and appreciate the software, I appreciate the support and community even more!
I mostly used Shift+Drag with right-to-left (crossing) drag because it’s easier in most cases.
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