Inkscape

'Hairline' Strokes for Laser cutter

Asked by TonyC

I’d like to use Inkscape in the class room to allow students to create simple drawings for eventual cutting/engraving on a laser cutter.

My first, and most important, problem is that I can’t find a way of creating a ‘hairline’ stroke - always the same width on screen, thin but clearly visible. This would be used to represent ‘through-cuts’ on the final material and it’s very confusing if these lines gain thickness when zooming. If I simply set these lines to ‘very, very thin’ then they can’t be seen when zoomed out.

I’m currently importing Inkscape files into Coreldraw (fiddling with them a little) and ‘printing’ from there. This isn’t really much of a problem at the minute but if I’m ever to print directly from Inkscape I’ll need to closely control the width of these ‘cut-lines’ to ensure the laser cutter really does cut continuous a line, rather than swinging back and forth in engraving mode.

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TonyC
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pbhj (pbhj) said : 		#1

2 things come to mind. 3 actually:

1) Use the View > Display Mode > Outline to draw your image, the lines are always visible even if you've got them exceedingly thin by default (or white on white, etc.).
2) Use a script to alter the widths of all the lines after the drawing is done [by the students, a script could act on a whole directory of images to prep them for cutting], that way the line width can be specified precisely. Or simply select all in all layers at the end and alter the line width. Careful, changing line width may change overall dimensions and move line intersections I think.
3) File a feature request for an Effect or Path Effect to convert all strokes to hairline.

HTH

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TonyC (spamz) said : 		#2

Tip 1 (which I'm embarrased I hadn't spotted) will at least let me make some progress with pupils so that I can get an idea of a workflow that works well for them. Hope to have a better idea of which feature request to make then.

Thanks for the help, Tc

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pbhj (pbhj) said : 		#3

Don't be embarrassed ... idea, have you asked the students if they can find a solution within the program - if you phrase it like "we need to _view_ lines that aren't otherwise shown, like white-on-white drawings" that would direct them to the View menu.

Good point to talk about the underlying SVG markup too ...

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Rick-firefang (rick-firefang) said : 		#4

I've created a patch that's even better than outline mode. This one only affects things that are being drawn smaller than half a pixel, and draws everything else normally: https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape/merge_requests/365