The closest thing I've seen to this is Tormach's Scan Cad ( http://www.tormach.com/blog/?p=1038). It's a really neat approach but very high complexity compared to what I think you're trying to do.
There's an open-source app called AutoTrace which claims to do bitmap->DXF conversion called AutoTrace. It appears to be dormant if not dead, but the SourceForge site is still up: http://autotrace.sourceforge.net/ There's also a Yahoo forum with some more recent (9 mos ago) forum messages: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/autotrace/ There might be better options out there if you're willing to start with some other vector format like SVG or EPS which you could either work with natively or convert to DXF. Potrace is one I found that is still being maintained actively: http://potrace.sourceforge.net/ The advantage of DXF would be that you could import it directly into pretty much any CAM package. In either case, once you have that geometry, it doesn't matter whether you scanned it or drew it in AutoCAD. If you want to go straight from scanned drawing to gcode, the main problem will be determining what to do with it. Engraving (ie. line-following) would be very easy, while profiling or pocketing would be anywhere from not too hard for simple polygons, to much harder for arbitrarily-complex figures with freehand curves and such. But this isn't unique, it's just 2.5D CAM. You'd also have a limitation (in a 100% automatic process) in that you couldn't have multiple features in a part, for instance, a bracket which is made by milling the outer profile and a bunch of holes inside that. Well, you could, but the chain of dependencies would get longer, as you'd need to say "the largest feature should be considered a profile while any features inside that should be treated as pockets." Anyway, Sebastian and Brian have probably given more useful answers, but it's an interesting puzzle and something that interests me as I think the complexity of the CAD/CAM workflow is something that stops a lot of hobbyists after they've gotten their machine to work. On Sat, Jan 15, 2011 at 3:11 PM, Loren Card <loren.c...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I'm looking for a way to generate a tool path from a simple line drawing. > Does anyone have a good way of doing this? I'd like to be able to draw a > shape, scan it to a black and white image file and have my router follow > the > lines drawn in the image. > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Protect Your Site and Customers from Malware Attacks Learn about various malware tactics and how to avoid them. Understand malware threats, the impact they can have on your business, and how you can protect your company and customers by using code signing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/oracle-sfdevnl _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
