Smoothing the curves on a DXF

[grindergary]

I am wanting to try to cut this cross from this post http://www.plasmaspider.com/viewtopic.p ... oss#p42283

When I put it in X6, it looks not bad but when I tried to cut it , the torch would act like it was start and stop at each node in all the curves. Of coarse, this made a mess and burned some of the parts apart.

Can someone tell me how to smooth the curves so as to get a nice cut. I am a noob at Corel so any info would be appreciated.

Thanks

Gary

[Team Tracker]

Hi Gary

First off select all objects by:

-dropping down the Edit menu clicking Select All-Objects
-drop down the Arrange menu and click on Join Curves to join all the little broken line segments that make up the drawing
-drop down the Arrange menu and click on Ungroup All to ungroup all the joined objects
-click on blank screen so no objects are selected then click on just the outer cross profile to select it
-select your Shape Tool (second tool from top of toolbar) or just press F10 to get Shape Tool and the nodes on the profile will show up
-look above your horizontal ruler for the Select All Nodes button and click it to select all nodes which will now be solid blue
-beside the Select All Nodes button is a slider bar that is now active, its called Reduce Nodes, click and hold on the slider and move your mouse to the right while holding the mouse button down and it will reduce the nodes and smooth the profile, if you go to far your profile will distort but once you find the sweet spot on the slider the profile will be smooth and the shape will still be correct
-complete this on all profiles you wish to smooth and be sure to save your progress each step of the way

If these instructions don't work or don't seem to make sense let me know. Hope this helps.

[grindergary]

Reid T,

Works like it is supposed to. Thank you for the quick lesson!

Thanks

Gary

[plain ol Bill]

Reid what version of CorelDraw are you using?

[JJsCustomDesigns]

Wish there was something like this for CorelDrawX4

[muzza]

Wish there was something like this for CorelDrawX4

There is, an upgrade to X5 or X6
sorry Aussie humour

[SignTorch Vector Art]

I'm pretty sure it was in X3 if not before

If it doesn't show up on the property bar when you have the node tool selected

then you can go in options/customization/commands and drag the reduce-nodes tool to a toolbar somewhere

[JJsCustomDesigns]

Holy hell... that works great. Always learning new stuff

Thanks Signtorch

[Dawgonhawg]

Good info. Thanks

[Team Tracker]

Reid what version of CorelDraw are you using?

I am using CorelDraw X6.

[762frmafr]

Hi Gary

First off select all objects by:

-dropping down the Edit menu clicking Select All-Objects
-drop down the Arrange menu and click on Join Curves to join all the little broken line segments that make up the drawing
-drop down the Arrange menu and click on Ungroup All to ungroup all the joined objects
-click on blank screen so no objects are selected then click on just the outer cross profile to select it
-select your Shape Tool (second tool from top of toolbar) or just press F10 to get Shape Tool and the nodes on the profile will show up
-look above your horizontal ruler for the Select All Nodes button and click it to select all nodes which will now be solid blue
-beside the Select All Nodes button is a slider bar that is now active, its called Reduce Nodes, click and hold on the slider and move your mouse to the right while holding the mouse button down and it will reduce the nodes and smooth the profile, if you go to far your profile will distort but once you find the sweet spot on the slider the profile will be smooth and the shape will still be correct
-complete this on all profiles you wish to smooth and be sure to save your progress each step of the way

If these instructions don't work or don't seem to make sense let me know. Hope this helps.

I am not disputing whether this method works or not, as I am sure it does. In fact, I learned everything I know about Corel from Youtube and trila and error. Here is my method for "smooting" a DXF like this one. Everyone feel free to chime in and let me know if this method gets the same results and other opinions please.

First thing I would do would be to take my pick tool and select the whole object. Then I would use my Boundary hot key, or got to Arrange then boundary and make an outside boundary.

Then for my program I would put this under the outside layer.

Then I would create an inside layer and then select my smart fill tool.

I would then fill in all of the inside "cuts". Which would then be automatically placed in the inside layer.

After that, you can then erase the original curves.

For the sake of my brain though, I go back and Boundary all of the smart fill curves and erase the smart fill.

Seems to work for me. Then this way, it is easy for me to choose inside and outside in sheetcam as well. What do the people that know Corel better than I say?

[Team Tracker]

Hi Gary


I am not disputing whether this method works or not, as I am sure it does. In fact, I learned everything I know about Corel from Youtube and trila and error. Here is my method for "smooting" a DXF like this one. Everyone feel free to chime in and let me know if this method gets the same results and other opinions please.

First thing I would do would be to take my pick tool and select the whole object. Then I would use my Boundary hot key, or got to Arrange then boundary and make an outside boundary.

Then for my program I would put this under the outside layer.

Then I would create an inside layer and then select my smart fill tool.

I would then fill in all of the inside "cuts". Which would then be automatically placed in the inside layer.

After that, you can then erase the original curves.

For the sake of my brain though, I go back and Boundary all of the smart fill curves and erase the smart fill.

Seems to work for me. Then this way, it is easy for me to choose inside and outside in sheetcam as well. What do the people that know Corel better than I say?

That's the thing about Corel, there are often times many ways to get to the same end result.

I may be missing something but how do you get a smoothed profile when you fill the original profile and use the outline from that?

See image below smoothed with the technique I described. Are you able to do this with your technique?

curve.PNG (2.56 KiB) Viewed 2465 times

[762frmafr]

Hi Gary


I am not disputing whether this method works or not, as I am sure it does. In fact, I learned everything I know about Corel from Youtube and trila and error. Here is my method for "smooting" a DXF like this one. Everyone feel free to chime in and let me know if this method gets the same results and other opinions please.

First thing I would do would be to take my pick tool and select the whole object. Then I would use my Boundary hot key, or got to Arrange then boundary and make an outside boundary.

Then for my program I would put this under the outside layer.

Then I would create an inside layer and then select my smart fill tool.

I would then fill in all of the inside "cuts". Which would then be automatically placed in the inside layer.

After that, you can then erase the original curves.

For the sake of my brain though, I go back and Boundary all of the smart fill curves and erase the smart fill.

Seems to work for me. Then this way, it is easy for me to choose inside and outside in sheetcam as well. What do the people that know Corel better than I say?

That's the thing about Corel, there are often times many ways to get to the same end result.

I may be missing something but how do you get a smoothed profile when you fill the original profile and use the outline from that?

See image below smoothed with the technique I described. Are you able to do this with your technique?

curve.PNG

I see what you mean now. What mine does is reduce nodes. Which I thought was the OP's original question. I have never magnified it enough to know whether I am "smoothing" it like you illustrated. Next time I will for sure and report back. Maybe I was way off base.

[muzza]

When you look at the preview of that file you can see that there are lots of straight lines. I imported the file into X5 and it had 2323 objects (line segments) so was never going to be a smooth flowing file. Simply by using the join curves function it reduced it to 54 objects.
After that was done by selecting all of the file I converted to curves and then selected one section at a time and reduced nodes to smooth the design. I only did a few sections to make sure it made it smooth and flowing.
May be a quicker easier way but that's how I generally tackle a file like that with lots of straight segments.
The other way I have done it that sometimes works is to save the file as a bmp file and then to an autotrace in Corel and smooth it in the trace.
Murray