Font problem cenon/front panel express

[weiss]

Hi guys,

i tried using cenon on my mac (which is a really nice program btw..)  to convert text and designs into hpgl format after exporting the data as .dxf from fpe. I tried this for the first time because there are way more possibilites that way and it's much cheaper using one single hpsl compared to having a thousand text elements directly in the front panel designer.
My workflow is as follows: FPE -> dxf file -> import to cenon -> hpgl file -> import back to FPE

But i came across some problems i can't solve:
The font i was using is outlined when i import it back to FPE whereas in cenon everything looks fine. I couldn't find any solution on my own.
Second problem: if i export the dxf files into cenon at first, the white engraved switch position dots/marks aren't being exported into the file. Why is that?
Third "problem": If i export it back to FPE, the size of the hpgl doesn't match my originally exported size. Of course i can resize it afterwards but i don't understand why that happens, i have set everything to 100% and original size...

Would be nice to get some ideas!  ???

thanks
Ansgar

 

[ruffrecords]

dxf is not the smartest of formats. Have you tried exporting as a .svg  or .pdf file from FPD? I find this works much better for importing into Inkscape.

Cheers

Ian

 

[weiss]

dxf is not the smartest of formats. Have you tried exporting as a .svg  or .pdf file from FPD? I find this works much better for importing into Inkscape.

Cheers

Ian

Yes i already tried that! When i use svg or pdf the problem persists. Even with inkscape.
it's not the importing but the exporting back to the front panel designer..
The text is all outlined, not filled, when it comes up in FPD. it seems the conversion is recognizing the outer edges of the text as the path to engrave, not the filling. Anyone have any more info on how to treat text in this process?

 

[Bo Deadly]

I've done this a bit and it does take some significant trial and error. I don't recall the details but there are two things that come to mind. One is that I use the single stroke font from FPD for text. The other things is that after importing the text into inkscape, I believe I used fill as opposed to stroke because entity sizes can change depending on the stroke and things get messed up. So disable stroke and use fill. Another thing about inkscape is that just before exporting to DXF, you should make what you want in the DXF visible, select it all, copy it, delete all layers and then paste. This will flatten everything. With some trial and error I was able to get good text without splining or outlines. Don't know about HPGL or importing back into  FPD though. I just send DXF to camexpert.

 

[ruffrecords]

What squarewave says makes sense. HPGL is a plotting language. It just draws lines with a pen. There is no infill function. If the text looks infilled it is only because of the thickness of pen used. A single stroke font is an obvious fix but if you use a more complex font then maybe you need to seet the pen size somehow.

Cheers

Ian

 

[weiss]

okay thanks guys! so the font i want to use is the problem then 

 

[ruffrecords]

okay thanks guys! so the font i want to use is the problem then 

Possibly. Try a single stroke font and see if the problem goes away.

Cheers

ian

 

[mutterd]

No, it’s not the font that the problem, it’s that when you are viewing it in your editing program you are viewing the font as a compound object with both an outline and an infill - but HPGL doesn’t understand the infill, because that’s not how a printer, or a CNC cutter work - to make objects appear filled in they trace the outline over and over, incrementaly smaller until it appears to be solid.

So your just missing a few steps in the process.

You need to first create and outline for the font in the editing software - in Ilustrator and Corel Draw its an option in the drop down menu’s.

At that point you need to “fill” the outline in with as many offset paths as it takes to get the CNC drill bit to create a solid object.

The offset is determined by half the width of the cutting tool used...

And don’t forget to delete the outer most path otherwise your text will be larger by 1/2 the cutter bit diameter!

After that, save the plot, import to FPE and zoom all the way in to make sure that it appears to be completely filled in...

The dots not appearing?  Are they assigned paths, or outlines?

As to the slight error in resizing - I have noticed it as well - I suggest you draw a 10cm line in your editing software, import it into FPE and figure out the % error and then compensate in your editing program...

Hope this helps - let me know if you have any other process questions - I’m not familiar with the software you are using so I can’t really help with if/how you can accomplish what you need but I’ve made quite a few panels with FPE using complex HPGL...

Timothy

 

[Bo Deadly]

okay thanks guys! so the font i want to use is the problem then 

Actually I have successfully used non-single stroke fonts in a panel as well. Although it was just a test panel, I wanted to see if it was possible to take a fancy letter from MS word and get it onto a panel. I did and it was flawless looking. IIRC, I printed the .doc to a .prn  using a stock PostScript driver, moved it over to Linux (or you could use Mac) and edited the .prn with vim (or you could use a regular text editor like notepad). The funny thing about .prn is that it is actually PostScript but with some gobbly gook at the top and bottom (if you use the right printer driver anyway). After removing that, I was able to import PostScript into Inkscape. Then I carefully flattened everything and exported to DXF. I think anyway. No doubt if I tried it right now it probably wouldn't work but with trial and error I could probably do it again. The trick is to stop everything from getting splined. Ungrouping objects may be important (meaning, in Inkscape select everything and then Ungroup). You may need to do this multiple times to ungroup everything and then also delete all layers to flatten as described previously.

I also use DraftSight to santity check the dxf files. Note a funny thing about DraftSight is that for some reason, it can have trouble opening DXF files directly. But if you create a blank DraftSight created DXF you can then insert another DXF element with File > Insert > Block > Browse > DXF > Ok. That can make all the difference.

 

[weiss]

Thanks guys!
Uh.. that sounds like a lot of trial and error..
These dots appear outlined just like the font. Originally i created them from an ellipse with fpd

I played around a little bit, but in inkscape, when i fill the inner area of the font with vectors with strokes the resulting text in any vector file plt or hpgl looks terribbly distorted and wobbly after importing to front panel designer, completely in contratry to the solid and clean text i created in inkscape  ???
I used the dynamic offset function

 

[[silent:arts]]

Think about how engraving works.
While filling with strokes works for bigger areas it doesn't automatically work fine in small details.

What we see in your example is a very small font size.
If your font doesn't work engraved you need to choose another technique (Silk Screen, Laser engraving, etc).
All looks and techniques have their pros and cons.

Or use the FrontDesign implemented DIN font, it is single stroke and looks very nice even to the smallest font size.

For special engravings ask Frank:
www.frontpanels.de

 

[ruffrecords]

Front Design now has an image import capability which can render just about anything. That might be worth a try.

Cheers

Ian

 

[weiss]

Think about how engraving works.
While filling with strokes works for bigger areas it doesn't automatically work fine in small details.

What we see in your example is a very small font size.
If your font doesn't work engraved you need to choose another technique (Silk Screen, Laser engraving, etc).
All looks and techniques have their pros and cons.

Or use the FrontDesign implemented DIN font, it is single stroke and looks very nice even to the smallest font size.

For special engravings ask Frank:
www.frontpanels.de

ok. there is no other option i guess..

Front Design now has an image import capability which can render just about anything. That might be worth a try.

Cheers

Ian

already tried. the images look terribly bad because they get downsized /compressed or something  :-\

 

[mutterd]

I played around a little bit, but in inkscape, when i fill the inner area of the font with vectors with strokes the resulting text in any vector file plt or hpgl looks terribbly distorted and wobbly after importing to front panel designer, completely in contratry to the solid and clean text i created in inkscape  ???
I used the dynamic offset function

They suggest you blow the image way up in the editing software and then shrink it back to size using FPE - did you try that?

as to the font size - I have had excellent results with characters down to 2mm using the process i described. And at 2mm its not that the lines are smeared, its just the the inner shapes like the triangle in the number 4 get to be really small.

Attached is a photo from the latest panel, the "Custom Engineering" is 2.5mm (0.098") tall - the blur and edge artifacts are just a function of the low light photo (sorry about that) - in hand the lines are sharp and true.

Timothy

 

[weiss]

You need to first create and outline for the font in the editing software - in Ilustrator and Corel Draw its an option in the drop down menu’s.

That's easy, just making a path out of the text. So far so good.

At that point you need to “fill” the outline in with as many offset paths as it takes to get the CNC drill bit to create a solid object.

Okay so how would i do that? Is there a function for this or do i have to draw that by hand?

And don’t forget to delete the outer most path otherwise your text will be larger by 1/2 the cutter bit diameter!

After that, save the plot, import to FPE and zoom all the way in to make sure that it appears to be completely filled in...

That i understand, it must overlap to not notice it was done with a lot of lines

 

[Bo Deadly]

I played around a little bit, but in inkscape, when i fill the inner area of the font with vectors with strokes the resulting text in any vector file plt or hpgl looks terribbly distorted and wobbly after importing to front panel designer, completely in contratry to the solid and clean text i created in inkscape  ???

That's what is called "splined" which is when an arc gets converted into a series of tiny line segments to approximate an arc. That is happening because the HPGL exporting capability isn't good enough to map inkscape drawing primatives into proper arcs. And you mentioned before your "second problem" was circles. So apparently Inkscape's HPGL export handler can't do circles either. Make sure you're not using a horribly old version of Inkscape (although that program hasn't changed significantly in a long time).

Just to reiterate your original problem: You want to put all of your panel engravings into an HPGL file so that it can be imported into FPD because it's less expensive. Correct?

As described previous, with some experimentation, I successfully exported complex vector graphics to DXF using Inkscape without text or arcs or circles becoming splined.

So you either need to find a better HPGL export for Inkscape or for whatever program, or find something to convert DXF to HPGL without anything getting splined.

Then you need to figure out the scaling. Vector graphics have a scale. But if you import one into another, the two scales are not necessary going to be the same. So you need to scale the drawing before importing it. Depending on the source of the HPGL export tool, this could be a matter of changing some document properties in inkscape.

Personally I wouldn't do images. Images are always going to look a little blurry compared to vector graphics. Vector graphics is the only way to do this professionally. A really high quality silk screen of a vector graphic drawing is the pinnacle of panel graphic quality. I'm not aware of any way to do that cheaply considering engravings can be done at the same times as routing. If the tool sizes are right, engravings from a vector drawing can look very good. Maybe even rival silk screen. Certainly they'll never rub off.

I use cam-expert.com for my panels because they take a DXF and, with some trial and error, I have figured out how to render just about anything (arbitrary characters from MS Word) to DXF.

 

[rob_gould]

There's some info about this issue on Frank's site :

https://www.frontpanels.de/faq/

 

[weiss]

Just to reiterate your original problem: You want to put all of your panel engravings into an HPGL file so that it can be imported into FPD because it's less expensive. Correct?

As described previous, with some experimentation, I successfully exported complex vector graphics to DXF using Inkscape without text or arcs or circles becoming splined.

So you either need to find a better HPGL export for Inkscape or for whatever program, or find something to convert DXF to HPGL without anything getting splined.

Then you need to figure out the scaling. Vector graphics have a scale. But if you import one into another, the two scales are not necessary going to be the same. So you need to scale the drawing before importing it. Depending on the source of the HPGL export tool, this could be a matter of changing some document properties in inkscape.

Personally I wouldn't do images. Images are always going to look a little blurry compared to vector graphics. Vector graphics is the only way to do this professionally. A really high quality silk screen of a vector graphic drawing is the pinnacle of panel graphic quality. I'm not aware of any way to do that cheaply considering engravings can be done at the same times as routing. If the tool sizes are right, engravings from a vector drawing can look very good. Maybe even rival silk screen. Certainly they'll never rub off.

I use cam-expert.com for my panels because they take a DXF and, with some trial and error, I have figured out how to render just about anything (arbitrary characters from MS Word) to DXF.

Exactly that's what i'm trying to achieve.. I was trying illustrator now but even with that i can't find the option to fill the inner outlines..  ???

There's some info about this issue on Frank's site :

https://www.frontpanels.de/faq/

thanks, nice info there but it doesn't explain how they did it actually... it just says that there are ways.. if it was only one large text, i'd do it manually but as it's about a lot of labels and text, that wouldn't be very efficient..  :-\

 

[weiss]

They suggest you blow the image way up in the editing software and then shrink it back to size using FPE - did you try that?

as to the font size - I have had excellent results with characters down to 2mm using the process i described. And at 2mm its not that the lines are smeared, its just the the inner shapes like the triangle in the number 4 get to be really small.

Attached is a photo from the latest panel, the "Custom Engineering" is 2.5mm (0.098") tall - the blur and edge artifacts are just a function of the low light photo (sorry about that) - in hand the lines are sharp and true.

Timothy

how did you fill your custom font? what software were you using?

this is the function i am missing in illustrator and inkscape: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UehrYPtEN4 !!!

 

[Bo Deadly]

how did you fill your custom font? what software were you using?

this is the function i am missing in illustrator and inkscape: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UehrYPtEN4 !!!

That's just making a single-line (aka single-stoke) font out of a regular outlined font but doing that looks rather crude. So what you really need is a good single-stoke font. If you can find a font online, you might be able to install it on your system in a way that Illustrator can see it and use it. Illustrator might have a SSF. Have you looked?

Actually FPD must have a SSF included within it somehow. If there's an actual font file, again, you could maybe install it system-wide.

I think single-stroke fonts look better anyways. A regular font with filling lines is going to leave potentially odd looking tool marks.