Tips for Node Editing and Fixing Overlaps

In this quick tip, we take a look at how to clean up a messy file and how to add a logo to a flag union by trimming the stars. This works in Vectric Aspire, VCarve, and Cut2D.

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Video Transcript:

Hello, everyone. Today we're going to be looking at a project sent in by Darry. And he is having issues with some overlapping vectors on his project. So I'm going to show you how to fix this. And I'm also going to show you how to clean up some of this file. So let's jump into the project. So as you can see here, we have a Kentucky State Police seal onto this union.

This is a flag union. And right now, he has the circle in here and he removed the stars on the inside. But as you can see, the trouble he's having is the stars connecting to the circle And you actually have to make a little bit of an offset here to disconnect those. Another big issue I see here is you could see this circle is not quite a circle.

If we were to select those two circles and go to the node editing, you could see these are very messy. So we are going to want to clean those up as well. And another one I could see here is in the center here, this center circle. You can see it's very messy as well. So that is going to definitely show up when you go to carve this.

And it may look like your toolpath is messed up, but it's actually just following these messy lines So we're going to fix all that and we're going to fix those stars as well. So the first thing we're going to have to do is fix those circles because we're going to need those circles to use to trim the stars.

So what I like to do is select the one circle here, and we're going to we're going to get the size of that circle. The best way I find to do that is to go to the scale tool. And you can copy one of these measurements here Since this is not a perfect circle, the measurements are going to be a little bit different.

But you can see if you were to round these numbers together, it's about 9.08 So I'm going to take that and copy that value and then click close. And what we can actually do is just delete that circle right now. And now we can do is go to our Draw Circle tool, and we're going to go with the diameter and we're going to paste that value here.

So 9.08, I'm just going round that 9.08 and I'm just going to just click anywhere on the screen and click close. And I'm just going to select that circle and click F9 to center it. So that's going to center the circle in the, in the job. And it looks like the seal might be a little bit off centered as well.

So that's another thing we can fix while we're here. So what we're going to do is select the inside shapes here holding shift. And we'll select all this and we're also going to select that inner circle and click F9 to center all of that. Now, it should be exactly center of the project. So now next we have to do is make the next inner circle.

And before we do that, you can see if we go to the node editing you can see that new circle is nice and clean. There's only four nodes on that. The old circle, you can see how messy it is with all of those extra nodes So that's what we're doing here is cleaning that up, making it look very nice.

So now what we can do is we can either create a new circle just like we did or we can just offset this circle inwards. And if we wanted to offset that, we just need a measurement. So we can use our measuring tool and get an idea of the distance up. So let's go to measure between two points and go from line to line.

And the distance is about 0.2 inches. So we can go with that measurement. So let's delete that inner circle. We're going to go with the offset tool. We're going to go inwards And we're going to go point two inches. We're going to select the Outer Circle and click offset. And there we go. Now we have a new circle there.

The only thing is right here, if you noticed the other circle, it had a little bit of an indent made there to accommodate that shape. Just like you see up here is a little bit of an indent in some of these areas. So we can do that, too. But we're going to wait until we've replaced this inner circle as well.

Because you can see we're going to have to combine those later. So now we're going to work on that inner circle and we're going to need the size of that as well. So to do that, since these are separate, we can hold, shift and select both of them. And now go back to their scaling tool. And this is going to give us our size.

The size we're concerned about here is the height, because the width, you can see it's cut off over here. So we need the height. So that'll be this measurement here. We can copy that. Copy that value, click close. And now we can go to our circle tool and paste that value here. And we can I can actually just scale or snap right to the center of the job right there.

And that will create the circle nice and centered. Then click close. And you can see that new red circle is going to be exactly where we want it. Now, we just need to offset that again. So we can either measure that or if we want to, we can just match what we did out there. That might be the best option to make it nice and even.

So what I'm going to do is delete those old shapes and actually I'm going to undo that, CTRL Z. I just want to measure that offset there so we can match that later. So let's just take a measurement on that. That's 0.03 inches, so that's about a 32nd of an inch. So we're going to delete those shapes, those old circles.

And we're going to select this one and we're going to offset it inwards using the offset tool. So go that same amount point two inches, and it might be a little too much so if it's too much, you can also change that value. So let's say edit undo. Let's say we did like 0.15 that looks better. Okay. We're going to go with that.

Now we're going to click close. And actually we have to offset the state now. So if we select that shape of the outline of the state, we're going to go back to the offset tool. This time we're going to go outwards. And we also want to create sharp corners because there are some sharp corners on this. And then we're going to type in that .03, we'll do .0313.

That's a 32nd of an inch click offset. And now you can see we're going to have a little bit of an offset line there And that should get into some of these shapes So now what we're going to do is we might have to do this in two separate parts because we're cutting into a couple of different shapes here.

There's several different ways you can do this using all the different tools. But the easiest way, since we're going into so many shapes might be to use the scissor tool, the interactive trim. Before we do that, though, you could see if we select both of those, go to the note editing. This looks fairly okay, but there are some extra nodes there.

So what we're going to do is we're going to select both of those and go to the curve fit tool in the edit objects. We're going to switches to busier curves. We're going to replace selected vectors and keep the sharp corners and click preview And that will clean it up some. Then click okay. Now we're ready to trim everything together.

So what we're going to do is use this as a tool to make sure the boxes checked. So it rejoins parts together after we're done trimming. And also we're going to do is trim these overlapped areas here and we're only concerned about the section right there. The intersection we can delete later. So we're just going to go around these shapes and just trim that section there, come down to the bottom.

Trim that away. So it has a little bit of a gap. Do that right here. In the final place will be out here. And this time will trim just like that. Okay. And like I said, don't worry about those inner shapes. Now, we're going to click close. Now, we could just select those lines and click delete the little line left over there.

We can delete. And then these two lines over here, we can delete And there we go. Now we have our circles all replaced. And now if we were to select all the circles and click the letter N to go to node editing, you could see how much cleaner these are. They're much cleaner. Nice and smooth arches on the ends.

So we no longer have those messy lines. So now that's going to carve very clean. Okay. So that's your foundation of how clean your project will turn out. Now we're ready to go into fixing the stars. So what we want to do here is you want to offset this line just like we did with that inner shape for the state.

So once again, you're going to have to decide how much distance you want. Here, let's say we go like a 16th on the for the stars. So we're going to use our offset tool again. We're going to go outwards. And let's say we want we went .0625. It's one 16th and we don't need sharp offset corners and we're going to click offset.

Another thing I like to do here is click select new and then click offset. And that will select the new shape when it goes to the offset. So then you can use that to select your other shapes. But as you can see here, we're going to have some issues in some of these areas because the star has now since we moved the shape in the middle, we are not overlapping, so we're gonna have to fix that first.

So let's click close. And what we're going to do is let's check the layers here. I could see he has some overlapping stars. Those red ones are overlaps So I can actually delete those red ones by selecting them and clicking delete to get rid of those you don't want overlapping vectors here. You can also right click on the screen and go to selection and select all duplicate vectors and that will find them and delete them as well.

Okay. So now we're going to fix the star down here. So what I'm going to do is just double click on this one, hold my control key in and grab a point that's going to match up with a point on that star. So I'm going to grab this lower left point of the star and bring it up here holding the control key and snap it right on top of the other one.

And now that's going to overlap that one and get it exactly where it needs to be. Now, if I use that selection box from left to right and just draw it over top of the old star, that's going to select that one. And you can see if I double click and move it, you'll see it's selected. And then I just have to click delete and now we're left over with just that one star.

So this operation that we're going to do could be done before you trimmed any of those stars like they are right now. So let's see, it looks like everything else is overlapping, which is good. That's what we want. So now what we're going to do is select all these shapes and we're going to trim away them. So let's see if this works with these open vectors, because right now these are considered open vectors.

So what we're going to do is we're gonna group all those together first. So I'm going to select every star that's overlapping and hold my shift key Any ones that are touching that outer circle. Okay. Now I'm going to click the letter G to group those together. Now they're all together. And now alls I'm going to simply do is with those selected first, I'm going to hold shift and select that outer circle.

And then in your Edit Objects menu, you're going to use the second button here called Subtract. Click on that button. If we go back to our vectors, you could see that automatically trimmed all those stars and it close them right off. And now you're going to have a little bit of a gap there and that's what you want. And you can increase or decrease that gap by setting a different offset number there.

But now you can see these stars are now closed vectors that will carve nicely. And some of these little areas here, you may want to just delete those. You don't really need those. You can see the one up top here is going to be pretty small as well. So that's going to be up to you if you want to keep those or you can change the offset distance to get a different number there.

But that's basically all you need to do for the vectors. So the last thing I would recommend doing is going to the vector validator tool and click search all. And you can see we have zero problems with this file, so that's perfect. Then click close. The last thing I would recommend is right clicking on the screen and going to selection And click select all open vectors.

And you can see we have no open vectors, so that's perfect. That means everything's ready to go. Now all you have to do is go over to the toolpath tab. You could select all of these vectors, then go to the vcarving toolpath. That's the toolpath I'd recommend for this. And since we have some larger areas, I would recommend a flat depth of around 0.08 inches.

You can select whatever v bit you like. I'm just going to say the 60 degree v bit for this example. And then I would use a large clearance tool for some of the larger areas. So let's say we selected.. let's say an eight inch end mill, and click Okay. And let's just click calculate we'll see what it comes up with.

And there we go. There's our toolpath. So if we preview both of those and then we can fill it with a color. Let's say black. This is what you're going to end up with. And you can see that looks pretty good. And if you need to make any changes like these little stars that are left over, you can delete those and recalculate the toolpath

if you didn't want those. But as you can see, that's how you can fix the file and how you can fix those overlaping vectors. So hopefully you learn something from this. And if you did, make sure you like and subscribe for more.