Re: jpg into Solid Edge

--- In CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@yahoogroups.com, "Mark Stacey" <pav@x> wrote:

>
> I need to mill a plaque from a jpg of a logo. Any recomendations for a
> converter to put a jpg into Solid Edge V15?
> Cheers
> Mark Stacey

Answering my own question. There is a way of importing a JPG into
Solid Edge draft files but it may only be for V16 not V15 and as I'm
having a "discussion" with the local maitntance folks over my V16
upgrade this isn't a going to happen with out someone's else's advice.
As there was no answer to my question I have researched the
alternative ie Raster to Vector programmes jpg to dxf at the cheap end
of the range.
NOTE The job is a JPG of a 90mm x 60mm black on white logo to mill
1.5mm deep as a pattern using Visual Mill V5 SP8. Other combinations
may invalidate my findings

From previous threads on this forum and on CNCzone I looked at the
following

MeshCAM - http://www.robgrz.com
http://www.robgrz.com/meshcam.phtml
Could not get it to do anything other than produce G Code not a Dxf.
Much prefer to use my copy of Visual mill as it has more features and
I'm used to it.

Procutter Free program.
http://www2.fwi.com/~kimble/scispec/scispec.htm
Profile cutter turns oval outline of the jpg into a circle. Couldn't
fix this so abandoned it with out trying dxf output.

Plug in to www.script-debugger.com Very hard to clean up jpg and no
dxf export

Wintopo
Free with nice tools for cleaning the image and produces a sharp dxf
but in my clumsy hands with many many gaps loops etc. Visual Mill
hated this. Despite using join and chain lines I never found all the
gaps and overlaps in the Visual Mill file to close the curves. So no
cutting paths generated.
Pro pay version looks better but as only a small portion is avalaible
to try cutting paths no CAM evaluation is possible

Rasterfratz.
Very simple inter face. Quality of the dxf is OK and it produces tool
good paths in Visual mill. No patching or weeding of the Visual Mill
file required after joining lines command used. Will probably buy this one

Scan2Cad
Nice image handling tools but image comes in quite fuzzy compared to
rasterfraz. To test Scan2cad is a pain only part of the image can be
saved. The part I saved needed patching in Visual Mill (Same problem
as Wintopo) and I gave up. It was like having the robot from Lost in
Space running my CAM program (SELF INTERSECTIONS FOUND, CANNOT PROCEED
FURTHUR!)

Cheers
Mark Stacey
www.cncprototyping.co.nz