Tips & Tricks | Stacked Text with Dan | Vectric

hello and welcome to a brief presentation we'll be looking at the do's and don'ts of creating a stack text project before we move on to the demonstration let's take a look at what we'll be covering in this presentation we'll be taking a look at a simple stacked text example as shown here on the right hand side which is the veteran user group 20:18 badge as you can see it looks fairly complicated with its sort of multi layers of text but actually if we follow some core principles and a series of steps it proves to be a very simple project to create we'll also be taking a look at how to productionize the process in terms of how we can make changes but minimize the number of processes on our calculation time and how we can scale up from a single part to produce multiple parts stack text projects can also be called text on text and before we start the demonstration let's take a look at some examples all these examples share the fact that we have one layer of text above another you all tend to look quite complicated but actually follow some core principles and steps proved to be very easy to create so let's take a look at some of those core principles we need to apply number one is to use levels work in a structured fashion so you don't get yourself in a mess make safe copies of the original vectors and text as you do merging these later in the process to create the text for the bottom layer separate the job into top and bottom text the whole project becomes a lot simpler if you think about it as two levels and be careful when merging attacks and when creating the vectors for the bottom section don't create don't merge the text merge the group vectors and you'll get the result you require the next stage is to apply these core principles in a project of our own so I'm going to go ahead and start our new session of V car pro 9.5 create a new file in this case it's a single sided job with six height for thickness 0.15 our Zed zero will be from the material surface and our XY datum is in the center I now need to start building my vectors for my text so I'm going to go straight across to the draw text command and just locate roughly in the middle there where I want the text to be and in this case is going to be vectric I use a group okay and I'm just going to close that form down and just Center that in the middle of the work piece and the next stage is to actually create a rectangle because what we're going to do is to have text in a box so I'm just going to go and create my vector now and in this case it will be centered at 0 0 and the width is going to be 4 inches and my height is going to be 1.5 so we have that rectangular vector in the center there I'm now going to select that vector go across to my draw text within a vector box and go straight ahead with my what will be 2018 and as you can see here I'm going to just make sure there is no margin size and just to make sure I'm just going to stretch the characters to make sure it feels the vector all together and close up and of course at that stage now I can delete that box and still come in and change my text if required I'm just going to rotate this text the 2018 text a little so I'm just going to select that now come into the rotation command and just give this an angle of 12.5 where the center of rotation is in the center of the work piece so 12.5 and apply that so now we have basically our vectors that will form our top and bottom now what I'm going to do before I do anything is actually to save these on to some safe levels so I'm going to select my vector accuser group there and move that to a layer new layer and this will be called top text sorry bottom text bottom text safe okay and okay that and then take our 2018 and move to layer new layer top text safe so now I've got the safe copies there I can start to create the required text for our upper and lower levels so I'm going to take the 20 18 now and copy that text to a new layer and this will be called top text and I'm going to take the bottom layer and copy that to layer bottom text but of course the bottom text or the boss of the effects that we're going to use before we actually poke it out the the bottom level needs to have both a combination of the 2018 text and the veteran usergroup text in order to be able to add on the 2018 on top of that so really what we need to do is also copy our 2018 vectors to the bottom layer so I'm going to copy that layer to bottom text as well so if I now come back up to the layers I can delete that layer one we don't need that anymore I'm going to switch off all my layers now okay and we can see our bottom text which happens to be both the 2018 and the Vetri user group and our top text is purely the 2018 okay the next stage for us is to create the vectors for the bottom layer so I'm going to switch off the top text switch on the bottom text and make that the active layer what we have on the screen here is two sets of vectors so we have the veteran user group and the 2018 and what we need to do is to bring these together merge them together in order to create the required vector that we'll need for machining the bottom layer so how would I merge these two together they're currently text so I might think about selecting all of those now and welding them together so if I weld them together I get this message I'm just going to convert those tête the text occurs and say yes and then go ahead and reselect and then merge those vectors but of course we do not get exactly what we want we're missing all the islands that have been basically trimmed away so I'm actually going to undo this so I'm going to undo which will convert it back into vectors and then undo which will convert it back to the text so we've got the text as we started now a key to the correct merging is to not try and merge simply a set of vectors or curves but to actually merge two groups of vectors so I'm going to the first of all convert these two curves and then regroup so on the left hand side I'm going to group that together and do the same with the vector user group text so right mouse key convert to curves and whilst that selected come across and group that together now if I select those two and weld we get exactly what we want so that now formulates the correct vectors for the bottom layer okay before we can create any tool pass we're going to need to think about the borders for the inner and outer and this is an offset of the vetrix 2018 user group text so whilst that's selected I'll go down to my offset command and I'm going to offset outwards now I know it I need to be point to our words so I'm gonna go point to inches outwards and offset but as you can see two things here one is obviously we have some islands left in the middle and also we have some quite sharp edges for not a particularly organic shape so I'm going to undo this now and we are going to offset so rather than going point two I'm going to over offset by half an inch and then bring it back inwards to create my inner and outer borders so I'm gonna go point five outwards so as you can see that's way larger and I'm gonna re select that one now and just Sisson say select new and delete original and we're going to come in words initially by point one which will be for the out border okay and as you can see there we've got some nice internal rounds on that page so a nice organic shape and then I'm going to go a further 0.2 okay so I don't need to delete the original and I'm going to offset that and now we have basically our inner and outer borders so I'm just going to close that now and we are now going to copy these onto new levels because they're currently on the bottom text level so I'm going to move to layer and this is going to be a new layer and it's going to be in a border and the outer one moved to layer new layer outer border okay before we go ahead and create any tool pass let's take a look at what vectors are on what layers so I'm just going to switch off all the layers first and then we've got our bottom tech safe which is our vector a user group our top tech safe which is the 2018 similarly the 2018 is on our top text layer and our bottom text happens to be a combination of the vetrix user group and 2018 merge together and our inner border and our outer border now we're going to start by creating the tool paths for our sort of top level or top text so with that I need to have the inner border and the top text shown and I'm now going to come across to machining and going to select all those vectors that we have on the screen and we need to pocket between those two so into the pocket tool path my start depth is going to be 0 the top of the workpiece and I cut them cutting down to a depth of 50 thousandth I'm going to be using a larger and a smaller tool an offset strategy once again please pick the applicable parameters based upon your machine and the material and your toning that you're using this is purely an example and I'm going to specify this as the top layer so we're going to cut this first and calculate so with that now I'm just going to give these a different color so I'm going to give them a nice orange color because we're going to pick a different one for the bottom and I'm going to preview those tool paths there so we've cut the top layer now or the top text now any to sort of cut or would be the underlying text so with that I'm going to come back now to our 2d view and I'm going to switch off my top text switch on the bottom text but obviously keep the inner border shown and to come back to our machining select all those vectors and go back into the pocket tool path command and the only thing I need to change here is a start depth so I start depth is basically the base of the tool paths that we created for the top which is fifty thousand and now I'm going to go down and cut by further fifty thousand exactly the same parameters and I'm just going to specify that as bottom and we're going to calculate so with that I'm now going to just change the color of the bottom toolpaths to be a yellow color and I'm going to simulate a preview visible to pass and there we have was looks to be quite complicated was actually a very simple process of creating the vectors for the top and bottom layers and then basically a pocket tour path for each of those two different layers so with that now I now need to finish this off by creating the cutout pass okay so let's go back to our 2d view now and we can actually switch off our bottom text and in a border switch on our outer border go back to our tool pathing menu and in this case we're going to select the vector and do a profile tool path we're going to have a start depth at the top of our material zero down to a cut depth of just past the material thickness 0.16 inches and we're going to be using our 0.125 inch end mill and we gonna be cutting outside the vectors and this is going to be called cut out and calculate so it's going to warn me that I'm cutting through the material but that's fine we're going to preview that tool path now and just get rid of the material and there we can see our completed batch okay before we take a look at how to productionize the process let's a little bit of a recap of the steps that we took to create this job so step one keep safe coffees we created the text and then we copy the top text to top text safe on the bottom text to bottom text safe separate the job into bottom and top sections so I created two new layers and we created the top text which was just a 20-18 and the bottom text had to be a copy of the 2018 and the veteran user group we then created the correct text layout for the bottom section we had to make sure that we merged the 2018 and the veteran user group together in order to create the required vectors for the tool pathing and then we went ahead and created the tool pass for the top player with a cut depth with the for the depth of the top text and exactly the same tool path ready for the bottom layer the only thing that we needed to do was to modify the start depth but keep the same cut depth as the bottom text was the same depth as the top so with that now we're now going to move on to look at how we can make changes to the design quickly which really looks at how we can productionize this so to do that we need to use levels okay have a set naming structure in which you've already adopted and if we're going to be importing data make sure the imported data levels happen to match the levels that we've got within our work piece and use the vector selector to associate the vectors to tool pass now on the bottom of the pocket tool path form you'll see the Vexin vector selection which was normally manual we're going to go to the selector and be able to pick the clothes vectors that happen to fall on particular levels and then associate the tool path with those so if we do modify the vectors on that layer then they will be automatically updated and the change in the design can be as easy it's just two steps one to re-import or recreate the new vectors and then just two straight recalculate the tool pass so let's take a look in the software now if we were to make any modifications to the vectors we would have to manually reselect them and recalculate each tool path whereas we can make this work a lot easier by using the vector selector so what I'm going to do now is just make sure that the vectors are switched on so I'm going to make sure our four levels with the vectors are switched on and then come back to our top tool path which was the first one we created come down to the vector selection process at the bottom and hit the Select and I'm gonna go all clothes vectors and I'm gonna use the inner border okay and our top text which were the two items that need to be displayed for the original tool path and make sure that we select the associated with tool path so I'm going to close that now and recalculate and then do the same for the bottom so I'm going to come back into the selector and this case is going to be in a border and bottom text and associate with tool path close that one now calculate and finally the cut out which I'm going to come down and use the just the outer border associate with tool path and okay and calculate and that's going to warn me and I'm going to recalculate so I'm just going to reset the preview now and make sure that everything did calculate okay so reset that preview preview auto pass and we'll just check that everything recalculated fine and there we have perfectly done and we set that up now now if I make any changes or import new text then obviously I can exact just replay recalculate the tool bus and that will be updated now that's what we're going to do here actually what I've done is I've created a new DXF file for vetrix user group 2019 so with that I'm just going to come back to my 2d view now and essentially delete all of the vectors that we see on the screen here now so I'm going to delete those out okay and we can see that we do have the top text safe and bottom text safe and of course I can if I wanted to make those changes with that so if I actually switch off the bottom text and come back into the drawing menu so if we swap across take that now I come into the text you'll notice that I will be able to edit the text so I could just simply come back in 2019 and it keeps the orientation without being reset which was a problem that we had with previous versions so but anyway I'm going to switch that off now and we are going to import a new set of data I'm gonna file import and this is gonna be a DXF file so we've got our twenty nine DXF okay now that happens to be set up with the same level naming so I'm going to switch that in and you can see here that it's we've got one level here with no data which I can delete but if you go in there and take a closer look now so I'm going to switch them all off we've got our outer border because that needed to be recalculated because it's an offset of 2019 and not 2018 we've got our outer border inner border we've got our top text and we've got our bottom text okay so with that now I can come across to my toolpaths okay and simply recalculate all tool path so I'm going to recalculate all of them now okay and that's perfect topaz very calculated successfully I'm going to reset my preview now so reset the preview so if you notice here we've got 2018 reset that preview and then preview all tool paths and we've created a new badge for 2019 so this was where I took a DXF file with new vectors on same layer structure imported that data and simply recalculated all the tool paths because I'd set up the vector selector to machine any vectors no matter what they are on that particular layer using that strategy so as the vectors changed all I needed to do is recalculate so with that thank you very much

Channel: Vectric Ltd

Views: 14,693

Keywords: vectric, cnc

Id: s7gyAcYfX6w

Length: 20min 20sec (1220 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 11 2019