cad from pictures for G-code.

[the4thseal]

I would like to take pictures of an object with a known reference. using cad get measurements. using the photo i would like to overlay the cad drawings, then using cad file create g-code. How do i do this.

I have Auto cad and rhino. I think this should be easy, how wrong am i?

[macona]

Not easy at all. There are ways take an image and trace but accuracy cab ne pretty terrible. CorelDraw can do this. And then you need to output it in a vector format and take that into cad and fix it.

I have found it is usually easier to redraw the part in cad.

[the4thseal]

What i would like to do is bring in the photo and trace over. Down and dirty kind of work. Corel draw can do this? Do you know which corel product, or just corel draw?

[DFMiller]

I know Solidworks can use a Jpeg as a background to draw to.
Dave

[macona]

That might be out of his price range!

Whatever the latest version of corel is should do it.

Some of the art orientated CAM packages also do this stuff for signs and the like. ArtCam is one, Bobcad has an art packare called BobArt that might do it as well.

[Black Forest]

Alibre will also allow you to bring in a picture and trace over the picture.

[the4thseal]

i have solid works.i have never thought of using it that way. The surprise is Corel draw. i would not have thought of that.

[macona]

i have solid works.i have never thought of using it that way. The surprise is Corel draw. i would not have thought of that.

Thats what we would use at TechShop to run the laser cutter. It needed vectors for cutting. Initially we had an Epilog and it had a print driver that handled it. Then we got one of the chinese machines and you needed to export a DXF into the control software. So I messed around with CD quite a bit and got decent results.

[Stepside]

Take a photo and use View>Background Bitmap and trace the part. Then measure some key points and scale the drawing to fit. Key points would be shaft diameters, distances between two features ect. If they are tiny parts and you have an optical comparator, then enlarge the parts to fill the comparator screen and take a photo of just the screen. This will allow you to have a large bitmap to trace and then you can scale later. If no comarator then get as large an image as you can with your camera. What you want is the greatest number of pixtels of the object so you can make the largest bitmap rectangle.
Quuestions?
Pete

[the4thseal]

that makes sense. So i should convert my pictures to bitmaps?