we thought we were ready to cut but saw i need to fill in more info…sorry…totally lost right now…
Options/Machine/Working envelope
this needs the usable area of the table x and y and the coordinates for 0
Table Display - needs x and y table size? 36" x 48" and the coordinates should be -1 and -2" so it starts away from the edge?
i may have more questions…at least my part is in sheetcam and i ran post processor…not sure if that is gcode yet or not…LOL
so i tried to run the cut…the torch followed the path/line up towards the top right of the part and almost went off the table…so i now know my part is not 12" x 18". that is what i make it in inkscape…maybe the size of my piece got lost in sheetcam? can firecontrol change the size?
horsereadytocutnow.tap (28.5 KB)
ok here is my tap file of just a plain horse unioned with my name. I made it 12" x 18" at least I thought…and the plasma table jogs to the top right corner and isn’t even a few inches into the design as i watch it on the screen in firecontrol. so it may have lost its size in sheetcam? how do i check this? thanks in advance, Lisa
@num1husker …….help…want to see if you are going to do another newbie sheetcam tutorial…I have made 2 files now and brought them into sheetcam and it looks like they are “not on the table”…when i tried to cut the horse above thread, it jogged up to the top right of the table and i stopped the program…now i made a really easy outline drawing of a chicken and its the same thing…looks like its not on my table…Lisa chickenreadyas dxf.tap (23.7 KB)
Opened that up and it looks like the start point is a good 200 inches (16.6 feet) off on the x plane. Definitely will need some work scaling and setting the zero point. If you can post the dfx file you loaded into sheetcam, I’ll try and see if I can create a rescaled tap file to load into firecontrol for you to try.
@james5…! LOL 16feet! OMG…I hope a few years from now I can look back and laugh about this…I will upload it, but num1husker offered to do a zoom with me, so I will try that first…thanks a bunch! Lisa
Zip up your Job file and post it here. Some of your SheetCam settings are messed up. The job file will let us see what the settings are.
Yeah you need to measure it in sheetcam. I have to scale everything I import into sheetcam by .935 for the dimensions to retain.
I suggest making a 10 inch square in Inkscape and then importing that into sheetcam to see what size it is.
All your settings need to line up. Inches in every program.
Inkscape does the same for me, says 8 x 8 and save as dxf…7000 x 7000 lol…scaling will be your friend in the end.
I just use 48x32 for my table size. I try to place the metal about two inches over from the bottom and left edge so the torch doesn’t blow out as much water. If you will download librecad and export your Inkscape as a dxf and open in librecad you can scale it to size and it will import into Sheetcam correctly. You have to set the 0,0 everytime you cut so the table size is just for reference anyway. You won’t have any negative coordinates if 0,0 is set properly.
Let me guess… you have a 0.91 version of Inkscape.
How do I know? The earlier versions of Inkscape used an internal coding of 90DPI. The newer versions (0.92.x) use 96 DPI. What’s 90/96? Hmmmm, let me see. Probably something close to 0.9375…
Sheetcam uses the newer coding for scaling drawings.
I have not had a problem importing SVGs into SheetCam as long as the SVGs were produced on a newer version of Inkscape.
Tom great info 
Yep. BTW V1 has now been released in a stable version.
Also, by default Inkscape includes the thickness of the line in its measurement of an object’s dimensions. If you use hairline thickness for your lines it’s not likely noticeable but it can be material at thicker line widths. It’s an option to have it disregard line thickness.
FWIW, the option is available under Edit->Preferences->Tools, Select Geometric bounding box as in:
And I leave mine set like this all the time.
90 DPI!!! No Inkscape, I’m using Affinity Designer, but now you have cured my OCD desire for an explanation.
I was nervous about size so I jogged my torch into the metal 1 inch on both sides then set zero just in case.i know there is a setting to tell the machine to not cut close to the edge…under job options or material, but I got confused which one to put it under…one of the tabs is for material size and one is table size right?
I’m not sure what setting you’re talking about. The machine is not that complex it doesn’t know where the torch is in relation to the table it only knows where the torch is on relation to where you set X,Y at 0,0. It will slam full speed ahead into the X or Y axis if you let it. I put my sheetcam border at .125 for both and zero the torch as close to the edge as possible. Use the f bomb bottle opener as a test cause it wastes very little metal and gives a good indication of different types of cuts. Be sure to use lead ins on it.
Ok I’m back on this for some reason, hear me out…
My program Affinity is set for 96 DPI. I can’t find an import DPI setting in Sheetcam, but I have to scale it by .9375 to retain my dimensions. My part is 11.5 x 28 in.
Now, I save as svg, then open it in Inkscape and all is well. I set everything to inches, then save as a dxf.
The whole point of going to dxf is so I can farm out bigger jobs to a local cutter without them charging me design time. So I need dimensions to be exact. But the dxf from Inkscape is off.
Both sheet cam and this company oshcut.com show my file as 4.7 x 11.5. (Their price for just one of this mini version of my part is more than I’m charging people for the actual size, so probably not going to use them but their estimating software interested me.)
What am I missing?
Did you check your version of InkScape? It needs to be 0.92.xxx to have 96DPI internal units. 0.91.xxx had 90DPI.
The other thing I’ve noticed about InkScape is that it sometimes gets (or produces) confusion if shapes are ‘transformed’. For some reason the scaling, and rotation factors are not processed properly if the transformation is applied individually to shapes.
Yea I have 1.1.