How to convert photos to a dxf

[Joewillacker]

How to put picture on sheetcam so I can cut it

[tcaudle]

Pictures are what are called "bitmaps" ( thousands of tiny dots) CNC machines can't cut dots (well, some routers can peck out a bitmap but that is another story) You have to have a "Vector" format (lines with XY beginning and ending points ) There is no simple conversion from bitmap to vector because it takes a lot of subjective decisions to decide where the lines have to be. There are some software packages that have a feature called "autotrace" that can take a fairly high contrast , high resolution photo and lay in vector lines, but the more complex the image , the more shading and the lower the resolution is, the less functional the result. You will spend a lot of time cleaning up an auto trace. A lot of the posts here are about converting from a bitmap (scan/photo/internet image) to a vector that can be cut. Dirty little secret: You cannot just scan and cut unless its already a drawing with distinct lines or edges. SheetCAM only takes vector (line ) drawings. DXF or SVG format. Needs to be clean and ready to cut with no cross over lines . Objects need to be joined so the background falls out (or they fall out to leave the shape in "negative".

So do some reading here on this list and in the File Conversion section and on the list as to how to learn to "digitize" (trace) a bitmap . There is a huge library of DXF vector files here and you can buy vector art work but you need to find and use a drawing program like Inkscape, CorelDraw or Adobe to be able to import different file formats and export them in DXF or SVG (better because the arcs are maintained) into SheetCAM to process and build the g-code for your machine to cut.