V Carve Help

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cfmetalworks
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V Carve Help

Post by cfmetalworks »

Hey everyone I'm new to this forum and just recently purchased a CNC Plasma Cutter from Laguna and V Carve Pro came with the table. I've done a lot of web surfing including here and went through the manual and cant find any real good info on using using the program. Everything of course is about cnc router since its known for that. Does anyone know of any good guides anywhere that might help out with learning this program?

Thanks!
sphurley
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Re: V Carve Help

Post by sphurley »

The Vectric web page has some good training videos. Did you get the disc with it? I have V-Carve and Aspire they are way overkill for a plasma machine.
I use them for 3D routing work a lot.
I use them to draw or fine tune a file and then export it to SheetCam as a SVG file. I can put lead-in and outs in SheetCam for the plasma machine.
Not sure if you got the machine local at the factory in SoCal but if you did and you need help PM me and I'll see what we can do.
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cfmetalworks
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Re: V Carve Help

Post by cfmetalworks »

Thanks for the reply. I went on their website and watched to videos a while back and on the 2D side of things it seems like they don't show you much. I do most all of my design work on Illustrator. I saw Laguna at FABTECH in Vegas last year and had them ship it to me. Laguna has someone coming to train me this week for 2 days but they want me to be familiar with the software so its has me a little worried lol. I cant figure out how to do lead ins on font with out it being on the outside? Would sheet cam be a better option for me?
Bobkovacs
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Re: V Carve Help

Post by Bobkovacs »

I used VCarve with my CNC router, but use SheetCam for my plasma because I don't have a post processor in VCarve for it. If I draw something in VCarve now (I normally use Inkscape), I save it as a DXF and post process it in SheetCam.
sphurley
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Re: V Carve Help

Post by sphurley »

I would reach out to Les from SheetCam. SheetCam is only the CAM program and I do see a Laguna post processor listed for Laguna in SheetCam.
I'm not sure how Laguna interfaces with G-code. A normal plasma machine you tell the CAM program (Laguna may have their own) what material you are cutting, what plasma machine consumables you have, the speed, height, kerf width, if you want inside/outside or on the line cuts. lead in's and or outs, type of lead in's, clockwise or counter clockwise cut, etc....
That said V-Carve is a excellent drawing program just seems a little overkill. Most plasma machines work with DXF or SVG files. (2D) Corel, Inkscape, etc.
Steve
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cfmetalworks
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Re: V Carve Help

Post by cfmetalworks »

OK thank yall very much! I don't know if I'm exporting it as a wrong file from illustrator but when I make something in Illustrator and open it in V Carve it makes a straight line have little steps in them. On illustrator it looks perfect but when I bring it in V Carve it doesn't look as smooth. Am I doing something wrong?
cfmetalworks
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Re: V Carve Help

Post by cfmetalworks »

Also if I've got intersecting lines and try to weld them on V Carve and it'll almost just weld it as one big outline all the way around. Not just were the lines are over lapping. Is there another tool to do that with? Sorry for all the newbie questions!
sphurley
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Re: V Carve Help

Post by sphurley »

There should also be a scissor tool for trimming overlaps and look to edit and join open lines to help remove open vectors. You can also select all duplicates and all open to check for issues before you export them.
Steve
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tcaudle
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Re: V Carve Help

Post by tcaudle »

cfmetalworks wrote:OK thank yall very much! I don't know if I'm exporting it as a wrong file from illustrator but when I make something in Illustrator and open it in V Carve it makes a straight line have little steps in them. On illustrator it looks perfect but when I bring it in V Carve it doesn't look as smooth. Am I doing something wrong?

Illustrator (AI) does DXF exports "segmented" Of course if the import into Illustrator is a segmented DXF it comes out the same way. Use either SVG or EPS to get it to Vcarve but you should be able to go straight from Illustrator to SheetCAM with SVG and skip the whole two step method.
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steel 35
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Re: V Carve Help

Post by steel 35 »

cfmetalworks wrote:Also if I've got intersecting lines and try to weld them on V Carve and it'll almost just weld it as one big outline all the way around. Not just were the lines are over lapping. Is there another tool to do that with? Sorry for all the newbie questions!
Not familiar with the weld In V carve; But I sure Use the Join feature a lot, it is very nice when you just can't find all the starts, double cuts ect. (operator errors) in sheetcam :lol:

Nesting is very functional as well.
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