Makerspace 3D and 2D

Leo's notes about 2D and 3D design and tools.

2D - Laser Cutting and engraving

Life cycle:

1. Design the 2D object (Inkscape, or any graphical editor)
2. Export to a compatible format: Gcode or DXF
3. Send to the laser cutter

Inkscape for Laser cutting

Good and short tutorial videos:

• Laser Cutting With Inkscape Tutorial

Notes: about Inkscape and Linux

Problem1: python 2.7 vs 3 for gcodetools

• There is an extension for Gcode export.
• It appears to be written for Python 2, while the newest Inkscape appears to be running Python 3. There might be problems with running the extensions. Change the default version for python to be 2.7 like this:
  • Open Inkscape preferences, usually here: ~/.config/inkscape/preferences.xml
  • Search for

<group
    id="extensions"
    …
    org.ekips.filter.gears.pitch="20"
    org.ekips.filter.gears.angle="20" />

• • Change to - add the following:

<group
    id="extensions"
    python-interpreter="/usr/bin/python2.7"
    …
    org.ekips.filter.gears.pitch="20"
    org.ekips.filter.gears.angle="20" />

• • More info here: https://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Extension_Interpreters

Problem2: unittouu

After running gcodetools extension you may get

AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'unittouu'

The solution is to update the gcodetools.py as follows. For me, this was on the line 5864 where unittouu is called. The problem is that it is referenced as

doc_height = inkex.unittouu(...

Fix this as follows:

doc_height = self.unittouu(...

Topics

• No topogrāfiskajām kartēm līdz drukājamam 3d modelim