Tracing a jpeg or pic stained glass design for output to SVG on WAZER Waterjet

richard_sturm

I build stained glass from public photos.
I have new Wazer waterjet that uses SVG and DXF as input file to produce cut files.
What would be simple path for me to copy files to Onshape and trace path for SVG/DXF output.
Onshape was recommended by a member here and posted in Wazer community.

SethF

I really like Affinity Designer. It's not free, but it's a one time, low price (compared to its competitors) purchase, and has a great support community on the forums.

shawn_crocker

I would use something like inkscape to do the tracing unless the tracing was really simple.  Inkscape can do a decent job of auto tracing things and generating paths that can be exported to .dwg.  Then you can import the .dwg into onshape and further fine tune the profiles.

richard_sturm

I tried Inkscape, but it is not supported on Mac IOS Ventura 13.  Any other thoughts ?, I really appreciate the quick response.  The tracing is simple and not busy with lots of detail.  Thanks....Richard

eric_pesty

Onshape might not be the best tool for this but it should be doable:

Import your picture and insert it into a sketch and trace it out in a sketch. Then create a drawing of your sketch (1:1 scale with no title block) and export that to either SVG or DXF.

richard_sturm

I tried Inkscape, but it is not supported on Mac IOS Ventura 13.  Any other thoughts as to where i can search

SethF

I really like Affinity Designer. It's not free, but it's a one time, low price (compared to its competitors) purchase, and has a great support community on the forums.

wayne_sauder

@SethF
 I use Affinity Designer on my Ipad maybe the desktop version is different but there is no DXF export. Have you figured out a workflow for DXF files? If I export a vector file from affinity and then try to convert it usually ends with something wrong. 

SethF

@wayne_sauder
Ah yes. I usually export as SVG, then if needed convert to DXF. It's served my purposes. But I was forgetting you can't export directly as a DXF, and can imagine that causing issues in some cases.

charles_tauber

Lightburn, intended for laser cutting, Adobe Illustrator and Glasseye, intended for stained glass design, all have the ability to trace images and export in suitable formats. Glasseye might be the most appropriate, particularly the Enterprise version that includes nesting capabilities and a variety of other functionality.