[SophieGirl]

OK, I am learning on a trial version of VCarve Pro 7.5, trying to decide if that is the one that I am wanting. I have converted a few .jpg pictures to .ai format and loaded them in VCarve Pro 7.5 trial edition. I did not get fancy, everything worked well, I hit calculate button, and I end up with just very big circles that continue to overlap each other, and they go WAY off of the work surface, to the point that when I view the entire tool path, that the actual work surface is on a tiny portion of a the arc of a VERY BIG Circle Does anyone have a clue what I am doing wrong?

[victorofga]

probably the ij set absolute..
in mach 3 look for settings ""incremental""

[SophieGirl]

I have not even made it to Mach 3 yet. I am only playing around with the trial version of VCarve Pro 7.5. I was successful on a couple of other projects, but this one picture is stumping me, and I am doing it the exact same way as I did the other ones that I did that worked well. I tried to post a word document with a screen shot of what the result was, but I guess I cannot post .doc attachments in this forum, or at least it would not allow me to. If you think you could help me, I can email you the picture of the results of what I am getting. Thanks again.

[ger21]

Can you attach the .ai file (zip it), and tell me what type of toolpath you're trying to create?

[SophieGirl]

Gerry, here is the attachment. Keep in mind, I am trying to get someone to convert this for me to g-code, I am just trying to figure out why I am not able to get VCarve Pro to get it to give me a good toolpath that I can view. As far as type of toolpath, I guess this shows my inexperience. I don't know what the different types are. I tried to create the toolpath with .125 ballnose using the VCarve tool icon. Also, I know that I cannot output files from the trial version, but are there any other restrictions that may be causing this, such as the size of the project I am working on or the number of vectors I am able to use with the trial version. That would make it easy.

[ger21]

OK, It took a few minutes, but I can duplicate what you're seeing.

First, let me suggest that you spend a few hours watching all the tutorial videos available for V Carve Pro, and learn what the different types of toolpaths do.

The V Carve toolpath that you used is typically used with a V bit. What it does is cut between two vectors, varying the depth of cut so that the edges of the bit follow the lines.
You'd typically use V Carving with single, closed vectors, like letters. You can select several closed vectors at a time, provided they are all closed, and don't overlap.

When you try to run it on several hundred vectors, V-Carve doesn't really know what you want it to do.
With something like your .ai file, you'd typically use several different types of toolpaths, depending on the type of look your after.

If you just want to engrave on the vectors, use the Profile toolpath,and specify on the vectors, which will let you select all the vectors and do a quick, simple toolpath.

[SophieGirl]

Ok, all of that makes since. For the type of .ai pattern that I had, what would be an appropriate tool path to use for this?

[ger21]

That really depends on the look you're after.
Probably a combination of V Carving, profiling and pocketing.
Don't limit yourself to the vectors in the .ai file. You can achieve different results by adding additional vectors by offsetting existing vectors, or just adding new ones.