Selected (red) font does not V-carve!

[jfhammond@kwic.com]

I have had trouble getting the English 111 Vivance BT font to work as a V-carve font even though it is highlighted in red on the font drop-down menue. What am I missing here?
The window that pops up says " The selected vectors self-interact. To identify self interation, group the vectors. They are already grouped!

I really like the font and can't really use it for anything.

Any suggestions?
Jim

[brian]

Jim,

What happens in Partwizard (or any other ArtCam softwares) is the script fonts want to overlap the tails of one letter into the beginning of the next. This is a problem for the V-bit toolpathing calculations because it looks for one closed entity to preform the calculation on. If the entity overlaps another closed vector it will give you the "self intersecting" error.

To get around this, ungroup the text until you are able to see the control nodes of a letter. I beleive that there is 4-6 edits allowed per letter before partwizard sees it as a new fonts style and does not allow the V-bit toolpathing, (not so in insignia or Pro). By hovering over the intersection of two vectors use (c) to cut the vector. Move to the other intersection point on the same vector and do the same. Select the 2nd vector and repeat. In all, four cuts will be made between two intersecting vectors. Delete the two newly cut vectors. Select the 1st letter and shift-select the 2nd letter so that both letters are pink. While selected, use the join funtion in partwizard and then the close function to create a closed vector encompassing both letters. Do this at the intersection of each letter to make your word into a closed vector. From here try your V-bit toolpathing.

Insignia and Pro has the Weld functions to make the editing process faster.

The other way around this is to physically move the letters in close proximity to each other so that they no longer are overlaping. Not as impressive but still an opption.

Maybe this helps.

Brian

[rookie432]

Jim,

Another option is to ungroup and select each letter on at a time. Zoom in to where the overlap is and move the letter using your arrow keys until they no longer overlap and are just short of touching. The kerning(spacing) shouldn't differentiate that much and the vee bit will still travel into the next letter.

Bill

[bjwat@comcast.net]

Ha! I ran into the exact same issue last night...almost pulled my hair out! I figured out that if I ungrouped them and moved them a little that it worked. (Like Brian said)

Funny how I look on the board today and see someone else with the exact same problem LOL!

-B

[jfhammond@kwic.com]

Thanks for the help guys!
I have been fooling around with various sign designs and scroll work and had a hunch about the overlapping after one of these other projects.

Nice to get such a fast response.

Jim

[edwardmc]

I had the same problem with English 111 Vivace BT font. But thanks to a call to ShopBot and Frank It was fixed very easy. Frank said to pick every other letter do the tool path then go back and pick the other letters and do tool path save both in one file then edit out the extra home move and cut. Well I works grate and is fast. ( Thanks Frank)
I had taken a job to cut Psalms 23 in English 111 Vivace Bt thinking it wiuld do it. And the other fixes would have taken to long. But thanks to the grate help from ShopBot I still made $$$ on the job. You just cant get better suport.

Thanks Again ShopBot and Frank

[frank]

You can give Ron Brown credit for coming up with that idea.

[rgbrown@itexas.net]

And I don't even have a copy of Parts Gizzard Frank!

[edwardmc]

Well I stand corected thanks to Ron Brown. But the thought stands. With all the Shopboters and ShopBot I just dont get any better. I'm glad I went with shopBot for my Tool.

[jay_mack1@hotmail.com]

Where are the up to 10 fonts that v-carve in PartWizard, I only count six?!

[ckurak]

I found 8:

Arial Black
Brush Script MT
Courier New
Curlz MT
Juice ITC
Monospac821 BT
Symbol
Times New Roman

Does anyone know what MT, ITC, and BT mean?

[kerrazy]

MT, ITC, and BT, Good question, The B stands for bold, the I is for Itallics and the T, I would assume is indicating the font is a true type font. The M may indicate it is available in fine medium (M) or bold strokes something you can not adjust it. With ProfileLab, I have over 1500 fonts avaialbe some 900 hundred true type fonts alone, and I suspect ArtCam is in the same position.

[gittel]

I believe that those acronyms (MT, BT, ITC) indicate the font foundry which designed the font. See http://www.agfamonotype.com/about/legal.asp for more information.

ITC - International Typeface Corporation
WTC - World Typeface Center Inc.
MT - MonoType (purchased in 2000 by AgfaMonotype)
MN - Mecanorma
HY - HanYang Systems Inc
TB - TypeBank Co. Ltd.
ITR - ITR Systems.

http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/findafont/a/fontaliases_c.htm
Font Source Abbreviations
A Adobe Systems Incorporated
BAG H. Berthold AG
BT Bitstream, Inc.
CC Corel Corporation
CW CompuWorks
DTC Digital Type Company
ELF Elfring Soft Fonts
IC Image Club Graphics
ITC International Typeface Corporation
LS Letraset or Esselte Letraset
LAG Linotype AG and/or its subsidiaries
MT AGFA/Monotype
URW URW++ Design & Development GmbH
VG Visual Graph

[jay_mack1@hotmail.com]

Charles,

I don't have the Brush, Curlz or Juice. What version of Windows do you have? Or did they come with another program? Could you e-mail me those three, Please.

Should these have came with Part Wizards, LOL.

How do you get more of them to v-carve or do you have to use the control software to do any of the others?

Thanks, Jay

[normand]

Answer from shopbot for having only 6 fonts If you look at the V-carve section of the PartWizard manual (located on your CD) you will find a list of all 10 fonts. We tried to pick common fonts, but not all computers will have all ten. Print the list from the CD and look for them on other computers at your home or work. They can be copied into your windows font folder and will appear the next time you open PartWizard.

In the meantime, download version 3 of the control software and try the new Typsetter program under the tools menu. It will try to v-carve any font on your computer. I say try because not all fonts are clean enough to V-carve. You can generate part files even if you are not using version 3 for running your Bot.

Happy Holidays,
Chris Burns
ShopBot Tools Inc.

[tlempicke]

A program called Fontographer will allow you to fix any of the problems that the font may have. In fact you can replace any letter in the font and PW will carve it.

If I weren't so damn lazy I guess I would located all ten fonts and make a copy of each that would work.

[mark holm]

Can anyone list the 10 fonts that can be v-carved by PW? I don't have my CD at hand.

[ramjectb2]

acutally couldn't you just weld it in coreldraw and export the font as a graphic and not have this problem?

[phil_o]

Normand, you wrote that a font can be copied into the Windows Font folder and it will appear in Part Wizard. I have quite a few TTF (true type fonts) in my Windows font folder that do not appear in the Part Wizard list. Is there a way to access fonts that do not appear in the Part Wizard list?

[normand]

Sorry Phil I just copy and paste what Chris Burns at shopbot awnser me about having only 6 red fonts.

[ckurak]

Just another tip using PartWizard:

While attempting to V-carve one of the "red fonts" I kept getting messages about self-intersecting vectors. Here is a solution that I found when I saw no obvious intersection or crossing of vectors.

When I UNgrouped some of the letters (e.g., the center of a lowercase "O" in Juice ITC), then selected the vectors (all of the nodes and control points will display inside a bounding box), I could see a "black" node. By hovering the mouse over the black node, right-clicking the mouse, then selecting "Delete Point", the node returned to green (start node). THEN, I could V-carve the letter.

I'm GUESSing that PartWizard is seeing the Start and End of a group of vectors as an intersection instead of joining them together.

Note that, if you accidentally delete a node, the letter will take on a new shape. This is probably NOT what you want to do. Simply UNDO the delete node operation. (Ctl-Z will work.)

Hope this helps. :-)