Documenting my iCraft story (this installment: paths and IdeaStudio pain)

[mcglk]

After Belle and others helped me solve my calibration woes, it was time to move on to seeing if I could put in arbitrary paths, and control the direction and order of the cuts.

I’m perfectly willing to be up front and say that most of my trouble may be that I’m misunderstanding how to use LLIS (LOKLiK IdeaStudio).

Basically, the first experiment was to cut out five 3"×1" (~75mm×25mm) labels from a 4"×6" (~100mm×150mm) piece of cardstock. Basically, I drew one long curve that defined most of the labels, and then filled in with three other curves to complete the middle labels. There’s one addition layer that’s the size of the medium; it has no stroke or fill, and should be made not visible in LLIS; it’s just there to help with placement.

I meant to attach the SVG file, but the community forum won’t let me. Hm. Well, let me export an annotated PNG file.

What I’m trying to get the cutter to do is start at ❶, loop up, around, and then cut between each label on the way down. The top and bottom labels are completely cut out at this point, and cuts ❷, ❸, and ❹ complete the middle labels. The curves are all set up to start at the green arrows and end at the red bars. I was really hoping this would work, because if I have to cut out a lot of the same thing, it’s nice to be able to optimize the paths.

But here’s where I started sweating a bit. In LLIS, I have to import the SVG, which is fine, but then it doesn’t appear as the same size; instead it’s 16.65"×24.98", and I have to resize it and place it in fields that I can’t just put in a value and hit the Tab key to move to the next field—I have to type in the value, then hit Return, and then Tab to the next value, which is kind of an odd choice.

Then I have to ungroup the paths, select the last one I want cut, click Make, and then select Standard Cut, select the Group that contains the one layer I selected, select the material type, click Add to Task, then press Cancel (which leaves the task in the task list), select the next-to-last one I want cut, click Make, select Standard Cut, select the Group that contains this new layer, select the material type (which hasn’t changed), click Add to Task, and then press Cancel, and so on until I select the layer with the first cut I want to make, and then go through all those same steps once again.

This seems . . . inefficient.

At the end, I have a task list, one task for each layer. Can I just kick them off all at once? No, I have to press Start for each and every one. Sure, there are going to be tasks you might want to pause between, but you should be able to just insert a wait-for-keypress task somewhere in there, and just have everything else go in succession. And why can’t I just default the material for all the steps?

My gut instinct is that I’m doing something wrong, but being in the field I am, I’ve seen a lot of substandard, unnecessarily obstructive software, and I’m now a bit concerned that all my complicated paths built for speed are going to be this painful.

But I am happy to report that LLIS started and ended the paths at the points I requested. Regrettably, because it has me hit Start between each task, it goes back to a neutral position after each task, so I’m not getting the efficiency benefit of having the paths ordered.

I guess my next step is to see if I can use SVG groups to bunch tasks and path orders together. That at least might reduce the number of times I have to pick the same material over and over. Here’s hoping.

[mcglk]

Okay. Kind of helpful; I do still have to place the layers in reverse order. Also, it turns out to be color-sensitive; all my cutlines should be in the same weight and color.

One odd thing, however; even though I have a continuous curve, it wants to retrace one of the horizontal lines (the fourth horizontal line); it starts off left to right, as you’d expect, then retraces it right to left, and then left to right again and completes the curve. As far as I can tell, it’s not that way in the SVG, but I’ll have to take a closer look.

But at least it’s not going to be as painful as it first appeared it was. Whew. More experiments await.

[BellethehowtoGuru]

I’m kinda guessing on what you are trying to achieve but have you tried selecting everything you want to make and then press make. After that you can choose the colour group you would like to cut. If everything on your canvas is the same colour it will cut everything at the same time so make sure they don’t over lap on your canvas. If they aren’t the same colour you can select multiple groups. Then you can select material and then add to task. Load mat then press start. Your cutting machine will cut everything out all at once. No need to add more to task list and then press start for each one.

Also if I have a heap of things that are different colour’s, like for a sticker sheet or something I create an offset for each one. I colour each offset the same colour. You can the select all images and offsets on your canvas and press make. Select the offset colour and material and add to task. Then it will cut everything out.

In regards to controlling how your cutter moves when it cuts, I have studied it’s cutting patterns and regarding cutting it is logical. But when it uses the pen it is a bit more random.

Did you do anything to make the cutter follow your cut path or did you just press start? With it overlapping on the fourth horizontal line do you have multiple lines there or is the last line passing through another?

Forgive me if I have missed your point or question. I’m just trying to understand how you did it so I can help.