Editing Laser cutter class (section)

=== Converting to DXF and importing to RDWorks ===

The laser program RDWorks can accept a number of file types, but unfortunately SVG isn't one of them. What we'll do, then, is convert our SVG badge into a DXF file, which RDWorks can use. Before we do this, however, we'll need to perform some preprocessing steps. If we just save a DXF directly, without performing these steps , RDWorks will interpret the file incorrectly, like so:

[[File:Laser_cutter_class_part_2_0.PNG|200px]]

As you can see, there are lots of extraneous lines, missing curves, no text. If we left the file as is, the laser cutter would cut precisely this, producing an incorrect piece. To fix this, we need to eliminate all the bezier curves in the image.

With the image loaded up in Inkscape, select everything and convert all of the objects to paths (Path > Object to Path). Next, ungroup all of the objects (Object > Ungroup>. This is especially important because we have text, where the whole text object is a group composed of multiple smaller objects for each letter.

[[File:Laser_cutter_class_part_2_1.png|200px]]

Finally, we'll flatten out all of the bezier paths (Extensions > Modify Path > Flatten Beziers). We'll pick the flatness to be 0.1, which is the smallest we can produce with this tool. If we need a smaller size, we can always scale up the objects first, then apply the tool, then scale it back down.

[[File:Laser_cutter_class_part_2_2.png|200px]] [[File:Laser_cutter_class_part_2_3.png|200px]]

Now we can save a DXF. In the save dialog window, select Desktop Cutting Plotter (AutoCAD DXF R14) (*.dxf) from the format dropdown menu. It's the longest entry in the list, which is useful to know if you plan on doing a lot of laser cutting. Make sure that the DXF's base units are set to millimeters so that when we import into the laser cutter software, everything will be sized correctly.

[[File:Laser_cutter_class_part_2_4.png|200px]] [[File:Laser_cutter_class_part_2_5.png|200px]]

We can now import the file into RDWorks. In a new document, import the DXF file just created (File > Import). Be sure to use import, not open, as the open dialog window only supports RDWorks' own RLD format.

[[File:Laser_cutter_class_part_2_6.PNG|200px]]

We can now see that the imported image has none of the extra lines that we had earlier.