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oh, and in my cold medicine induced stupor, I didn't look at it from all angles, and the stuff I listed above is covered if you can specify pre and post offset. :grin:

ju
 
sorry for the slightly off topic. after youve got these diagrams drawn out, how do you transfer them onto the chassis? silk screening or something?
 
[quote author="fum"]oh, and in my cold medicine induced stupor, I didn't look at it from all angles, and the stuff I listed above is covered if you can specify pre and post offset. :grin: [/quote]
That's why I didn't really understand what you wanted to do...

I have added the HPGL option BTW, so test away. But please be patient - it takes 10-30s to do the HPGL convertion.

The "generator" was out of order for about 10 minutes while I updated it - sorry about that...:wink:

I have also changed the text algorithm so the text gets placed more accurately (and so that text labels are possible), but I won't have time to update the script on the server with that until tomorrow.

Best regards,

Mikkel C. Simonsen
 
> the JPG was really crap when rendered.

JPG has a quality setting, from nearly uncompressed to very small and totally jaggy.

JPG compression works really well for photographs, really bad for hard line art. Setting compression to nearly-none gives good results, and files smaller than BMP, but JPG is really overkill for 2-color line art.

GIF is perfect for this. It only supports 16/256 colors, but that is plenty. Its compression is very simplistic, but works great for big areas of the same color (and poorly for photographs with lots of detail). GIF is lossless (assuming you start with less than 256 colors).

Problem with GIF is that it is a CRT format, and translation to printer is uncertain. Some browsers render GIF as 72DPI on 300DPI printers by just printing each dot 4-wide/high. This gives 4% error from what you might expect: fine for web pages, bad if you need to fit a meter or switch. Smarter browsers and image programs may do more clever things, not always what you want.

PostScript not only has an unambiguous notion of dimension on the output device (printer), it can do all the calculations for you. Of course that assumes you have a PostScript printer, that it has no bugs, etc.

PDF, PostScript's child, "should" render exactly, but the darn Acrobat PDF renderer always wants to do things its own way.

Is it now impossible to walk into an art store and find small protractors and compasses?

> since it's a CGI script, you would have to run a local webserver also...

Most CGI apps can be run at the command line, redirecting output to a file. Oh wait: command lines are obsolete, aren't they?
 
[quote author="PRR"]> the JPG was really crap when rendered.

JPG has a quality setting, from nearly uncompressed to very small and totally jaggy.

[/quote]

I was using Suns JPG codec, as included in jre 1.3 (com.sun.image.codec.jpeg.*), and had it set to :

param.setQuality(0.75f, false);

which is high quality, supposedly. Could crank it up to 1, but it matters not now, as we have this bitchin postscript version thanks to Mikkel.

It's a great thing when geeks run amok :thumb:

ju < not a graphics programmer, doesn't play one on tv
 
[quote author="chikkenguy"]sorry for the slightly off topic. after youve got these diagrams drawn out, how do you transfer them onto the chassis? silk screening or something?[/quote]

There are many ways, depending on your budget and/or DIY'itude.

We should probably put together a meta for this info, but here's a quick rundown of possibilities ( that you would probably search the archives for and find info on):

silkscreen
laser engraving
lazertran tranfer paper
toner transfer ala SSLTech
electrochemical etch

Hope this gets you started :grin:

ju
 
[quote author="fum"]We should probably put together a meta for this info, but here's a quick rundown of possibilities[/quote]
Yes, that would probably be a good idea - the "transfer to panel" part is by far the most difficult...

Best regards,

Mikkel C. SImonsen
 
[quote author="PRR"]PostScript not only has an unambiguous notion of dimension on the output device (printer), it can do all the calculations for you. Of course that assumes you have a PostScript printer, that it has no bugs, etc.[/quote]
I don't think there are too many bugs, as long as I only use simple level 1 PS.

Most CGI apps can be run at the command line, redirecting output to a file. Oh wait: command lines are obsolete, aren't they?
Yes, you can run it on the command line. But having to provide some parameters as environment variables and others in a URL-encoded string on STDIN does make it a bit user-unfriendly...

Best regards,

Mikkel C. Simonsen
 
[quote author="mcs"]I have also changed the text algorithm so the text gets placed more accurately (and so that text labels are possible)[/quote]
I have just updated the script with the new code - I don't know if anybody will notice the difference (yet) though...

Best regards,

Mikkel C. Simonsen
 
Here are a couple of new samples:

Scale5.gif


Scale6.gif


Now with optional subticks, ugly-font support and variable start/stop angles. I will update the script with these functions soon - custom labels coming soon...

I have added PNG and PDF formats BTW.

Best regards,

Mikkel C. Simonsen
 
I added the third version now - including a short manual.

Please test and report bugs :green:

Here's the URL, so you don't have to dig it up in the thread: http://stiftsbogtrykkeriet.dk/~mcs/Scale.html

Best regards,

Mikkel C. Simonsen
 
yes indeed,

excellent work there Mikkel.
I'm still experimenting.
:thumb:

... :sad: however, I'm not succeeding at the moment with PDF.
IE crashed and the PDF was blank.
show us the parameters of that test print above as an example.
 
Allright, this just keeps getting better. One more feature request.

Can you make the number of sub-ticks a variable, such that you could have 4 sub-ticks between steps?

I know, I know, give the people what they want, and they'll nickel and dime ya to death :grin:

take a peek:

http://shinybox.com/diy/buss-squisher/panels.jpg

Thanks Mikkel :thumb: :guinness:

ju
 

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