Nodes

Is there a way to reduce the number of nodes in a drawing? I use the
drawing In my plasma cutter and the results are a lot of sharp edges in
the finish product. The machine pauses at each node. If I could reduce the nodes and say end up with like a curve to replace a large group of nodes
it sure would help. Val C.

[shelbym]

You can do this two ways, first is to use curve smoothness. (One warning about curve smoothness is it will try and smooth the curve which sometimes can distort the drawing if you have sharp angles.)

To use curve smoothness select all the node with the shape tool. On the properties bar you will see a little slider that lets you adjust curve smoothness.

The second way is to use node reduce, this does a better job at keeping your sharp corners, you can customize it onto the Properties bar, but it does not allow you to specify a value. Unless you write a little macro like to:

Sub AutoReduceNodes()
    ActiveShape.Curve.Nodes.All.AutoReduce 0.002
End Sub

This code could be improved to loop all the selected curves and reduce them. Play with it, see if it fits your needs.

-Shelby

Shelby Thanks for thje quiick reply. I am not that great at wrighting code so if you could please give me a little more info on how and where to put the code, and how to activate it. This is all so neww to me. I sure appreciate any help I can get. Val C.

[shelbym]

A good place to start is to create your own GMS, here is a quick tutorial how to do that:
How to create a new GMS module
Then take the code I have given you and placed it in the new GMS you have create.

-Shelby

[Harry]

I guess you created the original object using autotrace of a a scanned image.

Though it gives impressive looking results at first glance, especially in the later versions, zooming in on the nodes does show exactly the problems you describe and, though you can tune the parameters, in practice there will always be parts that are rendered with too few or too many nodes.

For that reason, I always prefer to manually trace any critical objects, using the bezier tool. Its not that difficult once you get used to it and it gives you the choice of using exactly the number of nodes you need for every part of the object.

For example, a "corner" in engineering usually needs a radius. Two nodes, placed close to the corner will give you that radius. The segment between them needs to be a "curve", and the two nodes should be "smooth". You'll need to experiment with the bezier tool though, its easier to use than to desribe.

If you can't get the hang of the bezier tool, then an alternative is to use the
freehand tool and make up a curved segment using several straight lines. Then press F10, select all the nodes in that segment, right click on one of the lines and change from "line" to "curve". Right click on one of the nodes and change from cusp. Result -- a curve, though maybe not as smooth as you would like. So shift-select all the nodes you think are a bit poor, and delete them.

Hint: Don't try to manually draw a round-cornered rectangle. Draw a normal square rectangle, press F10 and drag one of the corners inwards. Result: a round cornered rectangle with exactly the right number (8) of nodes in a couple of clicks.