How to Create a Digital File of a Rocking Horse

2395 Views 17 Replies 7 Participants Last post by SteveMI, Dec 2, 2017

MT Stringer

Discussion Starter · Nov 27, 2017

The title says it all. How do I go about creating a file in VCarve Pro from scratch. From looking at the rocking horse, it appears it was assembled with screws only. My wife found it at the big Black Friday sale we went to and she is interested in making several to sell. You know how that goes. I have friends, she has friends, our kids have friends, and they all have friends. Seems all we have to do is post a picture on FaceBook and the sales come calling! :smile:

Stop me before I spend too much time if I am not going about this in the right way. My thinking is to disassemble the horse, and make tracings of each part. I have some graph paper printed in one inch increments with ten smaller increments also. I am hoping that will help me convert the measurements into digits!

So, after screwing up a couple of sheets I realized my printer settings were wrong for this application. It was set to Shrink to fit and not print actual size. Now the graph paper measures accurately.

If all goes well, I should be able to trace each part, record the measurements as accurately as possible, then create the files in VCarve. Yes, I know, for you hard heads, I could make a template and cut as many as I want on the band saw. But I want to have a little fun, so I am going to do it my way! :grin:

By the way, I used this website to print the graph paper. No need to go to the store.
https://incompetech.com/graphpaper/

The guy has some quick settings from folks that have asked in the past and I used one of them. One inch increments with 1/10 in lines in between...and a light grey background. Now all I have to do is match up the registration and tape several of them together and I should be ready to go.

Having said all of the above, my mom is gravely ill. This project may be put on hold until after Christmas.

Attached is the Rocking Horse I plan to duplicate.
Mike

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honesttjohn

· #2 · Nov 27, 2017

2

Mike,

MEBCWD should have the files for this and should be able to help you with the horse, if you need it - but you'e getting pretty good at this.

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Gaffboat

· #3 · Nov 27, 2017

The horse looks pretty simple and the first thought that comes to mind is to set the horse against a plain background and photograph it in profile. You could physically trace the outlines of the photo on paper and scan the result or put the photo in a drawing program like Adobe Illustrator and trace the edges there. Size isn’t important because you can scale it once you import the drawings into V Carve. You could also import the photo into V Carve and use the line tool to create outlines. If you use a program like Illustrator to trace your drawing, you can export the file as a DXF and import the vectors directly into V Carve.

If you dismantle the horse and trace around the parts you can scan or photograph the tracing and follow the same Illustrator or V Carve method above.

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MT Stringer

Discussion Starter · #4 · Nov 27, 2017

Duly noted. Thanks Oliver.

MEBCWD

· #5 · Nov 27, 2017

First thing to remember on projects like this is that it does not need to be perfect. It's just a rocking horse and nothing on it has to be precision cut for special joints or anything.

1. Take a good profile picture of the horse as close to 90 degrees as possible. You can use photo software to crop the image and adjust the brightness if needed.

2. Start a design file big enough for the project in VCarve or Aspire.

3. Import the picture into the VCarve or Aspire job. Center it in the job. Size it to fit the job. Select the picture and right click to get the drop down menu. Click on Object Properties and adjust the slider so that the pictures is visible when not selected to make it easier to trace the horse profile.

4. Click the layers tab and create new layers for the parts, body, body spacer, head, tail, leg and rocker.

5. Select body layer. Select Draw Curve on the Drawing tab. Trace around the body. Select Node Edit and adjust any nodes that are out of place. Continue with each part layer and trace each part and adjust the nodes as needed.

6. Then you need to decide what materials you want to use. I usually copy the vectors to new layers to layout for the toolpaths. Any parts that will be cut from sheet goods can be put on a sheet large enough to fit the bed of your machine. Parts cut from boards can be laid out to get the most parts from boards that will fit your machine bed. Set up your toolpaths for the material and parts you will be cutting.

7. You could think outside the box and setup your toolpaths to cut several boards at a time clamped to the bed in the proper orientation for the toolpath. This option would be good if you are going to make several rocking horses and saves setup time and bit changes.

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TenGees

· #6 · Nov 27, 2017

I tried to trace that, Mike but it's hard because of the angle of the shot. Here's a pdf of what I came up with. If you like I can separate the parts or save in eps or ai format. Or do it over if you wanna take a straight on photo.

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kp91

· #7 · Nov 27, 2017

Praying for your mom and family

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MT Stringer

Discussion Starter · #8 · Nov 27, 2017

TenGees said:
I tried to trace that, Mike but it's hard because of the angle of the shot. Here's a pdf of what I came up with. If you like I can separate the parts or save in eps or ai format. Or do it over if you wanna take a straight on photo.

Well, dang Paul, that looks pretty good. Thanks. I will play with it and see what I can come up with.

Yeah, spending the day at mom's keeping her company. My son dropped by and she was really glad to see him. That was definitely the high point of the day so far.

MT Stringer

Discussion Starter · #9 · Nov 27, 2017

Thanks for the detailed steps, Mike.

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honesttjohn

· #10 · Nov 27, 2017

MEBCWD is good at this stuff. Better than good even!!

MT Stringer

Discussion Starter · #11 · Nov 27, 2017

TenGees said:
I tried to trace that, Mike but it's hard because of the angle of the shot. Here's a pdf of what I came up with. If you like I can separate the parts or save in eps or ai format. Or do it over if you wanna take a straight on photo.

Paul, I haven't been able to capture the image from the pdf. I don't have Adobe Illustrator, but I do have Photoshop Elements and Inkscape.

I tried a free pdf editor with no luck. If you can save the image as something I can import into VCarvePro, I would appreciate it. Thanks for pitching in. I appreciate it.

With everything going on in my life, maybe my pea brain just isn't on the right track.

MEBCWD

· #12 · Nov 27, 2017

Mike the PDF Paul made can be imported as a vector file then resize it and you can then separate it into parts.

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MT Stringer

Discussion Starter · #13 · Nov 27, 2017 (Edited)

MEBCWD said:
Mike the PDF Paul made can be imported as a vector file then resize it and you can then separate it into parts.

That was easy. I was making it too difficult.
thanks all y'all for the help.

TenGees

· #14 · Nov 28, 2017

Mike, that should open fine in Inkscape. Choose the node select tool or it will seem like one object. Let me know if you need more help.

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Gaffboat

· #15 · Nov 28, 2017

TenGees said:
I tried to trace that, Mike but it's hard because of the angle of the shot. Here's a pdf of what I came up with. If you like I can separate the parts or save in eps or ai format. Or do it over if you wanna take a straight on photo.

Very nicely done, Paul.

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MT Stringer

Discussion Starter · #16 · Nov 29, 2017

Thanks everyone. Today, thanks to TenGees, and Mike, I managed to get the drawing scaled. There were several places that I had to modify, and several pieces that didn't scale to my specs.

It is not ready to carve just yet, but a lot closer than when I started.

With the vectors displayed on the screen, I created a box using the dimensions obtained from measuring the actual piece. 26 inches high at the top of the head, 18 1/2 to the top of the tail, 32 1/2 inch long rockers. Then I scaled the vectors to the size of the box, or as close as I could get. The rockers are the defining constraint at 32 1/2 inches. That just barely fits inside the max "x" width of my CNC.

I hid the head piece on another layer and scaled the rest of the horse until I got the seat height and tail height that I wanted.

Then I modified the area where the seat fits to the head, body and tail to get them to accept a 3/4 inch thick seat. I also created a separate layer for each piece.

Next thing to do is split them out and set up the pieces to carve. I think I can use some 1x12 white pine (or poplar) and some 1x6. No guarantee but I think I can get both front legs on one 1x6 and both hind legs on another one. The head, body and tail will require the wider boards.

With no shop time until hopefully Saturday, I am just about at a stop for now.

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SteveMI

· #17 · Dec 2, 2017

Or try this Building a Classic Rocking Horse -- Page 2

SteveMI

· #18 · Dec 2, 2017

DXF and DWG in this zip. Strange that we can attach zip files and not dxf or dwg.
Steve.

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