One of the things most frustrating about learning something new is...wait for it...you don't know how to do it (yet)!! My next task is to create laser cut stencils. In order to do this, I have to learn how to create vector based files (as opposed to raster based files). Having acclimated myself to drawing digitally with a stylus on a touch screen, making the jump to stylus and wacom tablet (drawing to the side while looking at the screen) takes some adjusting, plus my eyeballs are aging, so my posture is terrible as I lean in to the computer, willing the cursor or stylus to do exactly what I want. The file set up for the laser cutter at UM uses Adobe Illustrator. So, I began by importing the original BioArt file (right) and figured out how to "pencil" trace the shapes. Each color is a different stencil so I traced each color as a different layer, then saved each layer as a different file. Depending on the size of the motif, next time, I will maintain good registrations marks and lay out all the stencils on one piece of cutting material. The laser cutter is set up like a printer, so once we loaded up the file, it was sent to the cutter and about 90 seconds later, the pink stencil was cut on a piece of scrap. The laser cutter reads a cut as a black line less than .01" which we checked in the settings before pressing "start." After noodling with Illustrator for hours, it would, of course, been faster to just cut it out with an Xacto knife, but this way is faster, more accurate, safer, and most importantly repeatable at a fraction of the time. File creation will get faster the more I do it.
Actually today, as I write, I've discovered that while I don't have an Abobe license on my Surface, I can save svg files using Inkscape. So, with the sample below I traced just now I find Inkscape much more intuitive and I can use my stylus and touchscreen for greater accuracy (and less eyestrain). This weekend, I'll retrace the layers in this app and then try importing them into Illustrator in the fabrication lab to see if anything is lost in translation.
Wow!!