Issues Converting for Laser Cutting

[makersam]

Hi everybody
I have been lurking in the background of this site for a while and finally got around to actually joining up with forum. Funny that I have time to build/fly planes, but never seemed to get around to getting on here lol

I worked in a Maker space a little while back and have access to a 40w laser cutter with a 14x9 inch bed (Full Spectrum in case you were wondering) and I have been converting mostly the smaller or more fiddly bits to save time. The old style of plans seem to edit to a usable vector fairly easily in Inkscape with the occasional problem that is usually relatively easy to fix.

I took a break from building for most of the summer and was excited to get access to a full 20x30 inch 80w laser right at the time I wanted to build a Bushwacker and a few of the hot off the press Explorers. I was disappointed to find that the new format of the free plans that it has become very time consuming and difficult to format these plans for a cutter. The checker patterns are individual lines and are very difficult to group delete.

Has anyone else had this problem with the new format and does anyone have any suggestions of how to get around this. I am willing to do the work and make clean and easily cutable vectors if anyone has tips on how to solve this.

I wanted to build the Explorer with my friends tomorrow so I sent my plans into my favourite large format printers (C$0.44/ Sq/ft) to pick up in the morning, but I am itching to play with my laser cutter again.
Thanks everyone- I have fallen in love with Flite Test and have been loving the videos and building the planes with my friends.

 

[TEAJR66]

Download the PDf.

Open the file and turn off the layers you don't want.

Print to CutePDF and it makes a regular old style plan.

You will need to adjust the paper size in Custom Postscript.

From there it is still a PDF and I don't know about turning those into vector graphics.

 

[josephdouce]

inkscape select a line and right click > select same > stroke color/fill color/stroke and fill

with these you can select all lines of same color and delete in 1 second.

 

[makersam]

inkscape select a line and right click > select same > stroke color/fill color/stroke and fill

with these you can select all lines of same color and delete in 1 second.

Problem is that the hatch marks are the same colour as the 50% lines. If they were a different colour I would have no issues because I could just tell my cutter to ignore that layer or if I wanted to get rid of them them I could do as you are suggesting.

 

[makersam]

Download the PDf.

Open the file and turn off the layers you don't want.

Print to CutePDF and it makes a regular old style plan.

You will need to adjust the paper size in Custom Postscript.

From there it is still a PDF and I don't know about turning those into vector graphics.

For turning off these layers what program would I be using to do that? I was not aware that you could even select layers to view and edit in PDF. I have only ever imported them into inkscape and done all my editing there.

 

[TEAJR66]

Sent PM

 

[makersam]

So with some searching discovered that there are strip-able layers in the PDF of the Bushwacker, but not for the Explorer. Any ideas of how to remove these without this work around? Right now I would be willing to sign papers and do favors if I could get my hands on a copy of the original source file or the file they use to cut the speed build kit.

 

[makersam]

I discovered that a helpful friend accidentally changed the line colour on the vector. This works pretty good. So much frustration that was solved by re-adding the PDF to my inkscape project.

Thanks

 

[SP0NZ]

So with some searching discovered that there are strip-able layers in the PDF of the Bushwacker, but not for the Explorer. Any ideas of how to remove these without this work around? Right now I would be willing to sign papers and do favors if I could get my hands on a copy of the original source file or the file they use to cut the speed build kit.

That was my fault. I forgot to export the layers for the Explorer 1.0 plans. I made some minor corrections to the plans for v1.1 and I will make sure to export the layer information to the PDF file for those.

 

[Maingear]

That was my fault. I forgot to export the layers for the Explorer 1.0 plans. I made some minor corrections to the plans for v1.1 and I will make sure to export the layer information to the PDF file for those.

Thank you sir!

Justin