2 Tips for Increasing Toolpath Preview Quality
Quick tip on how to increase the quality of your toolpath preview. This works for Cut2D, VCarve, and Aspire.
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Video Transcript:
Hey everyone in today's quick tip, we're going to look at two different factors, you can change. To change your quality from a preview that looks like this, that's very blurry and hard to see. To a quality like this on the right, that is very good quality and easy to see all the detail. And this has nothing to do with the toolpath settings themselves.
So we're going to jump into Vectric software and look at the two different things you can change to improve your quality of your 3D previews. So here we are in our Vectric software. And you could see if we zoom in here, we have this highly detailed 2D vector graphic here, and you could see we are in a four by eight sheet.
So we're going to imagine that we want to make multiple copies of this inside this sheet. So that's why we're using a four by eight sheet. So let's maximize our 3D view. And for this project, I just created a simple VCarve toolpath for the vectors. And then I created one profile toolpath to cut the final shape out.
So we're going to do preview all toolpaths and then the waste out here, we can double click on that to remove. And now if we zoom in on that, you can see this looks very blurry and it's very hard to see the details that this will carve. So I'm going to show you the first option that we want to change. And that is by going up to your toolpath menu at the top, come down to preview simulation quality.
And by default, it's going to be set at statndard. And to increase the quality you want to increase theis setting up here. So each setting you do, you can see it's going to be a little bit slower, and this is only going slower in your 3D rendering on your computer. This will not affect the toolpaths in any way.
So if you want the best preview that you can get, you want to turn this up to maximum quality, and you can see this is going to be 25 times slower. So it is going to render a little bit slower, but you'll see the difference that it makes. So let's click maximum, and let's click preview all toolpaths
and you can see right away that looks really, really nice. Much better than it did before we can actually see the details that it's carving. But if you zoom in closer, you can see it still is a little bit blurry. So now I'm going to show you one more thing you can change to get that better quality preview, and that's going to be the size of your sheet.
So, like I said, we split our views again. You can see, we have all this empty space out here and the way the preview works is in pixels. so if we zoom in, you can see all these square little pixels here. Each one of those pixels is controlled by the quality that you set up at the top. So when we turn that up to maximum and we have all this extra room out here, all those extra pixels are being wasted out in this extra space.
So if you make your sheet size, just big enough to hold your project, that will increase the quality because all of the extra pixels are going to be in that smaller project. So what we're going to do is go to our job setup. And we're going to change this size to something just big enough to hold our project.
And you can see right there. It's just big enough, just a little bit bigger than our project. And before we accept this, another thing to note here is the model resolution. This only affects 3D models, this does not affect 2D graphics. So if you're using a 3D model, you will also want to turn this up as well.
But since we're only using 2D vectors in this project, we can ignore this setting because it will not affect how our preview looks. So we're going to click okay. And now you can see in our preview, the sheet size is much smaller. And we can even go back to our toolpath settings and turn this back to standard and then preview our toolpaths again.
And you could see if we maximize this, even at the standard quality, this looks much, much better than it did before when our sheet was really big. So having just a smaller sheet size helps a lot, but you can see if we combine the smaller sheet size with the maximum quality. So let's turn that up. And also every time you change that setting, it's going to automatically reset your preview.
So now we're going to do preview all toolpaths again.
And now you can see this looks like a major difference here. So with a smaller sheet size and the maximum quality, this looks really, really good. And this is going to be the best quality that you can achieve, uh, with your job size. So we can double click on the waste to remove it again, and this is going to be what we're left with.
So now when you get this where you want it, you can save this image by getting the correct view. So if you wanted the Z view and you can fill in the space and then you can click save preview image, and that will save this image to your computer. So if you wanted to share this with a customer, this would be the best quality to share it with a customer.
And a couple more tips to note here, is I generally preview all my projects in the standard view first until I get all the toolpaths where I want them. And then once I think I have everything where I want them right before I go to save the toolpaths, I will preview one last time in the maximum quality just to confirm everything looks the way I want it to.
That will just save you time in the previews because of your previewing, a very complicated toolpath, it will take a long time in the maximum setting to preview. And then if you had to change a setting in your toolpaths, you would have to reset the preview and wait through that longer preview again. So that's why it's a good idea to do it in standard first.
Or even one of these high or very highs, they're not too slow, but definitely do the maximum last, right before you save the toolpaths to get a final preview of what this will look like. And then one other tip is if you wanted to carve this in a larger project, but you wanted to save a preview image, just reduce it to the smaller size, just for the preview image.
And then save this preview image. And then when you're ready to finalize your toolpaths, you can increase the size of your project again and do whatever else you have to do in this project. And then if you're using Version 11 or above, you can even go to your sheets tab, add a new sheet in, and this sheet you can make larger if you want it to nest multiple copies of this in a larger sheet, and then you'd still have the smaller sheet for the best quality preview.
So hopefully this tip helped you out. And if it did make sure you like this video and subscribe for more.
So we're going to jump into Vectric software and look at the two different things you can change to improve your quality of your 3D previews. So here we are in our Vectric software. And you could see if we zoom in here, we have this highly detailed 2D vector graphic here, and you could see we are in a four by eight sheet.
So we're going to imagine that we want to make multiple copies of this inside this sheet. So that's why we're using a four by eight sheet. So let's maximize our 3D view. And for this project, I just created a simple VCarve toolpath for the vectors. And then I created one profile toolpath to cut the final shape out.
So we're going to do preview all toolpaths and then the waste out here, we can double click on that to remove. And now if we zoom in on that, you can see this looks very blurry and it's very hard to see the details that this will carve. So I'm going to show you the first option that we want to change. And that is by going up to your toolpath menu at the top, come down to preview simulation quality.
And by default, it's going to be set at statndard. And to increase the quality you want to increase theis setting up here. So each setting you do, you can see it's going to be a little bit slower, and this is only going slower in your 3D rendering on your computer. This will not affect the toolpaths in any way.
So if you want the best preview that you can get, you want to turn this up to maximum quality, and you can see this is going to be 25 times slower. So it is going to render a little bit slower, but you'll see the difference that it makes. So let's click maximum, and let's click preview all toolpaths
and you can see right away that looks really, really nice. Much better than it did before we can actually see the details that it's carving. But if you zoom in closer, you can see it still is a little bit blurry. So now I'm going to show you one more thing you can change to get that better quality preview, and that's going to be the size of your sheet.
So, like I said, we split our views again. You can see, we have all this empty space out here and the way the preview works is in pixels. so if we zoom in, you can see all these square little pixels here. Each one of those pixels is controlled by the quality that you set up at the top. So when we turn that up to maximum and we have all this extra room out here, all those extra pixels are being wasted out in this extra space.
So if you make your sheet size, just big enough to hold your project, that will increase the quality because all of the extra pixels are going to be in that smaller project. So what we're going to do is go to our job setup. And we're going to change this size to something just big enough to hold our project.
And you can see right there. It's just big enough, just a little bit bigger than our project. And before we accept this, another thing to note here is the model resolution. This only affects 3D models, this does not affect 2D graphics. So if you're using a 3D model, you will also want to turn this up as well.
But since we're only using 2D vectors in this project, we can ignore this setting because it will not affect how our preview looks. So we're going to click okay. And now you can see in our preview, the sheet size is much smaller. And we can even go back to our toolpath settings and turn this back to standard and then preview our toolpaths again.
And you could see if we maximize this, even at the standard quality, this looks much, much better than it did before when our sheet was really big. So having just a smaller sheet size helps a lot, but you can see if we combine the smaller sheet size with the maximum quality. So let's turn that up. And also every time you change that setting, it's going to automatically reset your preview.
So now we're going to do preview all toolpaths again.
And now you can see this looks like a major difference here. So with a smaller sheet size and the maximum quality, this looks really, really good. And this is going to be the best quality that you can achieve, uh, with your job size. So we can double click on the waste to remove it again, and this is going to be what we're left with.
So now when you get this where you want it, you can save this image by getting the correct view. So if you wanted the Z view and you can fill in the space and then you can click save preview image, and that will save this image to your computer. So if you wanted to share this with a customer, this would be the best quality to share it with a customer.
And a couple more tips to note here, is I generally preview all my projects in the standard view first until I get all the toolpaths where I want them. And then once I think I have everything where I want them right before I go to save the toolpaths, I will preview one last time in the maximum quality just to confirm everything looks the way I want it to.
That will just save you time in the previews because of your previewing, a very complicated toolpath, it will take a long time in the maximum setting to preview. And then if you had to change a setting in your toolpaths, you would have to reset the preview and wait through that longer preview again. So that's why it's a good idea to do it in standard first.
Or even one of these high or very highs, they're not too slow, but definitely do the maximum last, right before you save the toolpaths to get a final preview of what this will look like. And then one other tip is if you wanted to carve this in a larger project, but you wanted to save a preview image, just reduce it to the smaller size, just for the preview image.
And then save this preview image. And then when you're ready to finalize your toolpaths, you can increase the size of your project again and do whatever else you have to do in this project. And then if you're using Version 11 or above, you can even go to your sheets tab, add a new sheet in, and this sheet you can make larger if you want it to nest multiple copies of this in a larger sheet, and then you'd still have the smaller sheet for the best quality preview.
So hopefully this tip helped you out. And if it did make sure you like this video and subscribe for more.
