breaking outer border of pdf and jpegs when bitmapping

[Josh's Woodworks]

I have ad one little issue which I hope someone can help me with. When I look at using jpegs or pdfs (especially silhouettes), the outer border stays as a grouping and I don't know how to break it apart. I though you could ungroup it but you cannot. What I am looking to do is to machine the vast majority of my silhouette piece with a 1/2" or 3/4" wide bit and then come back with a finer (.25 or less diameter bit) to get the sharp crisp edges. Maybe my approach is wrong but can someone lead me or help me into the right path?

thanks

Josh

[4DThinker]

Could you post an example of the PDF or JPG you are having trouble with?

[Josh's Woodworks]

Here is the one I am working on. I am working on the shadowing of the Riverview name. I cannot get it into two layers.

Thanks

Josh

[Josh's Woodworks]

Here is one of the drawings I am working on. Looking at just engraving into the board a bit but don't want it to take like 6 hours.

any suggestions.

[4DThinker]

Josh,

I imported the Hillsboro PDF, Started a new drawing then imported the PDF as vectors. In VCarve 7 both the letters and the lines outlining the shadows were separately selectable and a right click on any one or more vector that were selected had a popup window that included Move to Layer. I ran into no groups per say. Some letters were run together and consisted of a single polyline, but generally it was easy to separate the shadow vectors from the foreground letters with one in a different layer. I'm not sure if this was what you wanted to do, but the file attached had all the shadows in the H2 layer I created.

[4DThinker]

When I open then render the Pheasant file just as you created it the QuickEngrave reports just 46 minutes to cut. A pocket of the same area reported 58 minutes. It is a large area to remove so some time will be taken no matter which strategy. A larger diameter bit to clear most of the open area followed by a smaller bit for the details is the best I can recommend to lower the total time.

[Josh's Woodworks]

When I open then render the Pheasant file just as you created it the QuickEngrave reports just 46 minutes to cut. A pocket of the same area reported 58 minutes. It is a large area to remove so some time will be taken no matter which strategy. A larger diameter bit to clear most of the open area followed by a smaller bit for the details is the best I can recommend to lower the total time.

How do I break the larger bitmap boundary of the pheasants, fence and grass boundary? I would like to break it out in sections?

Thanks

[KarenW]

How do I break the larger bitmap boundary of the pheasants, fence and grass boundary? I would like to break it out in sections?

Not sure but is this what you mean?

[Josh's Woodworks]

How do I break the larger bitmap boundary of the pheasants, fence and grass boundary? I would like to break it out in sections?

Not sure but is this what you mean?

Yeas for the most part. What did you do to do that?

[KarenW]

You have to find the areas you want to define (or break out from the rest of the overall vector) and separate them.
I'm including 3 attachments - one is the reworked file (pheasant-1a.crv) that you can compare to your original and see how the areas are separated. Easy way to do it is to open VCarve twice so you can compare them side by side.
The next two attachments are specific areas so you can see how and where you have to define a vector or a specific shape.
Always remember when you cut a vector and join it in a different point you have to re-join both areas.
Jeez.. did that even make sense.. lol.
In the example, I isolated the bird on the ground by first finding the line of the tail and separating it from the surrounding foliage and making that bird its own separate vector. Then I made sure all the open vectors of the foliage were also closed.
If this is confusing, don't hesitate to say so and I'll figure out a more clear way to type it out so it makes sense.