In order to get free delivery back in January, I rather hurriedly had a variation on Dan’s box lamp cut, and was kicking myself when the pieces arrived for not making full use of the hardboard - I’d overlooked the fact that the box lamp only uses one bit of the hardboard, and should have added something useful as Kyokpaesshowroom (bit of a mouthful I know) did: a wee tangram puzzle. Neat.
It would be great if Ponoko alerted the designer when they are about to waste material. But since we already have a ready-made repository of laser cutting template files in Ponoko, could a program be developed that analyses your .eps file and suggests other designs that could be added to make better use of the material? This could even be done in such a way as to add a little chaos to the process, leading to some interesting mashups of designs in unintended materials, or at unforeseen scales. It seems that Ponoko has provided a great opportunity for improved efficiency of materials in this way. A quick search brings up the imaginatively named Sheet Layout but this seems overly powerful for most people’s needs, and I’m unclear as to whether it could automatically place a cutting path in a given space.
Incidentally, the case of Dan’s box lamp seems to be a good example of ‘remixing’ design data on Ponoko: starting with his floral design;
and then my tea-leaf inspired design (a pattern that I pretty much cut and pasted from another of my projects):
As derivatives of a ShareAlike license, all of them are available for free, on attribution and non-commercial terms. Plus there are more lamp designs using similar principles. VodkaandOrange’s Bonsai lamp, below, makes great use of the laser cutter to create an intricate cut-out pattern in the acrylic. Isn’t light brilliant?
Now check out Johnny Lee demo his Wii Remote hacks, which transform the $40 game piece into a digital whiteboard, a multi-touch screen and a head-mounted 3-D viewer.
Johnny’s open source hacks available on his site (you MUST watch the videos to see a humble genius, squatting on his apartment floor to demonstrate the most amazing hackplication) mean anyone modify the code for their own application, like say producing a 3D cad model of your very own sketch furniture…..
If anyone does actually use this to produce 3D models, PLEASE send me images and/or code.
While I’ve written quite a bit about Inkscape recently, that’s not to say that Illustrator isn’t popular around here in our Ponoko office! We want to make sure that users and those thinking about Ponoko can find the help they need in getting technical issues sorted out in making their designs and uploading them onto Ponoko. Here are some useful links - user communities and tutorials on everything Illustrator (in no particular order):
Illustrator User Group Forum - Join other Illustrator aficionados in this lively discussion forum hosted by Digital Media Net.
Illustrator World — This is a community site devoted to Adobe® Illustrator® software and vector graphics. View and share Illustrator artwork with other users, read and contribute to forums, access tips and techniques, and participate in design contests.
DeZine Zone Tutorials - Look to the left side menu and see the Illustrator tutorials for Beginners, Intermediate and Advanced
N.Design Studio - Design blog by a designer who shares his passion in Illustrator tutorials intended for intermediate users.
I know there’s a slew of them out there - some better than others. And since Illustrator integrated a search function with del.icio.us, it should be easier to find the right contextual resources you need — so if you know of any more sites or recommend any particular one, please feel free to add them in the comments - thanks!
Once you get going on Illustrator, go ahead and download your Ponoko Starter Kit in Illustrator for the Ponoko making guide and templates. If you still have questions or want to share some newfound knowledge, check out our Forum to discuss with other Illustrator/Ponoko users.
**Remember we’re running a contest this month for file uploads, so if you create your designs and add them to MyPonoko, you might have a good chance to win $250 worth of fun designing and making with Ponoko.**
Over the holidays I’ve had a bit more time to play around with Inkscape and try my hand at making stuff with Ponoko. And as a newbie with graphic software, there are still some issues that puzzle me. So I turned to our forum to ask this question:
“I have an image I’ve traced and coloured so I can get it rastered onto a piece of acrylic. But I’ve found that when I select the image and try to copy it into the P1 file in the starter kit all the details in the engraving change. The lines just seem to all get thicker and it wrecks the image. Any ideas on why the image is changing when I’m doing a simple cut and past within Inkscape?”
Right away I got a really good step-by-step explanation from Ponoko’s jimmy.kl. So I thought I’d share this on the blog because I know there are some people out there who are dealing with learning curves on Inkscape. Help can be found here on our site, especially on our Forums.
Here’s his reply:
“Hmm, not sure why Inkscape does this but it seems to be adding a black stroke around all the objects you paste into the template.
I fixed it by going to the Fill and Stroke palette, then in the Stroke Paint tab I clicked the cross to remove any stroke from the traced paths.
An example for anyone else following this thread…
In a new document I traced our logo with these settings:
which had this result:
but when I cut n pasted to the P1 template it looked like this:
So I opened up the Fill and Stroke palette, went to the Stroke Paint tab and clicked the cross to remove any stroke from the traced paths and that fixed it.
I will investigate further and see if there’s a way to update the template files so this does not happen. But in the meantime I hope this workaround helps you out Steven.”
If you want to add to the discussion thread, check here, under Making Stuff: Inkscape Issues.
**Remember we’re running a contest this month for file uploads, so if you create your designs and add them to MyPonoko, you might have a good chance to win $250 worth of fun designing and making with Ponoko.**
A few weeks back I wrote up my experience in using Inkscape with my kids to design a piece of jewellery with Ponoko. Now I can show you the results. They actually arrived pretty quickly but I’ve been messing around since then trying to work out what to use for the chain. We ended up going with the thin black leather, thought it gave the kind of “tough” look the boys wanted. Needless to say they were very happy with the results. They’ve already given some away to their friends and are quite keen for me to “make them some more Lego”. It’s definitely a case of “what have you done for me lately?” in my house.
I’ve added the .eps files to my new Ponoko showroom so if you want to get these made for you or your kids you can download them and have Ponoko cut them out for you. These aren’t for sale though. I’m not sure on what the copyright situation is with something like this. I think you’re pretty safe if you just make it for yourself and don’t try to sell them. At least it seems so according to the comments on this Instructable.
One word of warning. Inkscape doesn’t open .eps files. So if you’d like to customize the design yourself you’ll need the .svg file. And you can download that right here!
Here at Ponoko we know that there are SO many of you who are really excited about designing your own products. But there are some hurdles to get over, and the first that usually stumps people is actually getting your design into a form that can be made into something real. For those of you with design skills and experience using Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw it’s not such an issue. But for all you newbies the team here at Ponoko are studiously working on more How-To’s to help you expand your creativity.
One tool we are going to put a lot of focus on is Inkscape since it has some neat features for you new Designers that I know you’ll like. I know I do. The most obvious are:
B: It runs on Mac OSX and Windows. In fact I run it on both and it seems to be identical even.
and C: It’s FREE.
In my opinion, software is created to do something for me. Whether it’s sending an email or creating beautiful and unique jewellery NOT take hours of my time before I can even get a result from it. So normally when I get a new software package to use, I try to just do what I want rather than completely read the manual. While I’m sure that’s a bit frustrating for software developers who are probably shouting, “Read THE MANUAL Steven!!!” at their screens right now, I think a lot of people do this.
So if you are that way inclined and would like to get a quick win with Inkscape my very first suggestion is that you try tracing an image using the video at the bottom of this post. It is included in the Instructable that Dan and John created. Using the videos, the Making Guide in the Inkscape Starter Kit, and a lot of playing around my son and I were able to design our first piece of jewellery on Ponoko earlier this week. It took us quite a bit of time to get the image where we wanted it (mostly because of my lack of experience with Inkscape) and to then get it into the .eps version for Ponoko, but we did get there eventually. And it was very satisfying when we finally uploaded the completed .eps file to MyPonoko - a bit like having our first baby.
Here are some simple points that we came up with during the process that I think might make it easer for you to get the results you want without spending the same amount of time that I did. (Thank goodness for school holidays).
1. Choose a simple image! It can be tempting to want to trace something complicated but it can be depressing if it takes too long to get a first result. Especially if working with kids. Following the video below will really help. Please note the video pauses after about 10 seconds you just need to press play again to get it started. I find it’s easier just dragging the video slider to the point I’m working on so I can focus on that point in the process.
2. In the Ponoko starter kit it mentions that you MUST have your lines a certain color and stroke width so that the laser cutter knows to Cut, Raster or Engrave. But, I suggest you don’t do this UNTIL AFTER YOU’VE FINISHED YOUR DRAWING AND FITTED IT TO THE INKSCAPE STARTER KIT TEMPLATE. We started changing the lines as we worked but discovered after much drawing that the line widths we’re seemingly changing automatically. VERY FRUSTRATING! But when we left it to the end it was actually very easy to select and change the lines as a group. Knowing this would have saved us a lot of time. John and Dan created another video below that is very helpful with this and I suggest you watch that too.
3. Another reason NOT to change the lines for the Laser Cutter while you are working on your drawing is that they become so darn small that you need to use the magnifying tool to see them and then you can’t see the whole picture. You can avoid this by just drawing in a stroke width you like and changing them all at the end for the Laser.
4. When converting you lines to the right color and width for the Ponoko Laser you’ll need to set the RGBA values in the “Fill and Stroke” window. Within the Starter Kit it currently mentions only the RGB values. This only gets confusing if like me you start setting the A to 0 when thinking it’s the B. This causes your lines to disappear (and your kids to scream). You need to keep the A at 255 (as shown in the video above and image below).
With this much information you should be really dangerous now. Especially if creating customized jewellery, stencils, holiday decorations or any other 2d object is your first goal! Dan is putting together a new Instructable on a piece of jewellery he’s made and we’ll have that up for you to look at very soon.
I’m a little late on this after the holidays but Core77 have announced a really exciting Design Competition in collaboration with the Greener Gadgets Conference. Submissions started on December 26th and close on January 27th so you still have 20 days to go. If you’ve been dreaming up green gadgets in your spare time this might be a great chance to put it onto paper (or onto your design software of choice) and get feedback from the community.
The Greener Gadgets Conference is a “one day conference featuring key representatives from some of the largest consumer electronics companies in the world, innovators from academic thinktanks, members of startups focused on renewable energy, and some of the leading minds in the word of sustainable design and business”. Some of the sponsors include Nokia and HP. And there is a very cool list of Presenters including: Mary Lou Jepsen - Chief Technology Officer, One Laptop Per Child Project, Markus Terho - Director of Environmental Affairs, Nokia, Renee St. Denis - Director of Product Take Back and Recycling, HP and utterly fascinating Inventor, Engineer & Technoartist Natalie Jeremijenko. Jeremijenko looks worth the price of admission alone, her previous work has focused on socio-technical change and she was also named one of the 40 most influential designers by I.D. Magazine and one of the inaugural Top 100 Young Innovators by the MIT Technology Review.
The competition requires you create 3 images. One showing the object itself, another showing it within context, and another showing the detail or exploded view of the gadget. You’ll also need to provide a 500 word description of your project. First prize is US $2500 and there are two runner-up prizes of US $1000 each. The full design brief can be found on the competition site here. But the short of it is that the product should try to cut down on environmental impact throughout it’s lifecycle and use.
I’m really interested in seeing the results, and it’s good to see companies like Nokia and HP behind this as well. You have to wonder what the impact is of gadgets on the environment especially since the numbers in use over the last ten years have risen so exponentially with the combined popularity and affordability of cell phones, mp3 players, digital cameras and hand-held games. I’d be curious to know what kind of power usage increase they’ve caused. The gadgets I own seem to go a long time between charges but the number of items with rechargeable batteries seem to be growing as well. I hope that some of the newer gadgets come with alternative power capability through solar or even kinetic energy. I have to say I wish the disc in my Nike+ iPod sport kit had the kinetic energy battery option. It would seem like a good idea rather than having to buy a new one and consequently a new receiver as well every time the battery runs down (or is that the plan?)
Thanks to Ponoko user Sue for steering me this way to this cool online vectorization tool that changes bitmaps into vectors. VectorMagic, the result of a research project by James Diebel and Jacob Norda at Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, is a free online auto-tracer, converting bitmap images into vector art:
This tool can trace logos and photos, which could be incorporated into your 3D designs either as etchings/engravings, cut-outs or the actual shape. It’s received some pretty positive reviews from users familiar with comparable tools like Adobe Illustrator’s Live Trace and Inkscape’s Trace Bitmap. It seems to be quite easy to use, especially for those not so adept with graphic software. Bittbox gives it two thumbs up and shows some examples of images that have been vectorized. As does JTB World Blog and Geekfindr. Check it out and have a look at their samples and comparisons with the other tools.
The post below is courtesy of the geniuses on the Ponoko technical team. In order to help everyone (and in particular people like me who have very little experience in designing with vector software) we needed to make some changes to our starter kit. This addresses any problems opening .eps files with the vector software we recommend using. These changes come thanks to all the great feedback we get from you guys out there and on the Ponoko Forums. We can’t implement every change we get requested but we certainly love hearing them so don’t be shy about commenting or letting us know your thoughts.
Why have you changed the templates and the making guide?
Unfortunately, we’ve been finding out that one size does not fit all when it comes to .eps files. Adobe Illustrator CS®, Macromedia Freehand MX®, Inkscape and CorelDraw X3® all handle .eps files differently - which has been causing problems for everyone!
We did a bit of investigation and saw that we needed to provide templates that work in each of these vector art packages.
So we’ve been busy and created 4 downloadable starter kits. They contain new Ponoko templates and a revised making guide for Adobe Illustrator CS®, Macromedia Freehand MX®, Inkscape and CorelDraw X3®. The revised making guide outlines the design steps you need to follow to make sure the .eps files you create upload properly.
I have the old .eps templates and making guide, what do I do?
You’ll need to download the new starter kits. They contain unique templates and making steps for Adobe Illustrator CS®, Macromedia Freehand MX®, Inkscape and CorelDraw X3®. You can also download a ‘general’ making guide that shows you the design process to make with Ponoko - but doesn’t outline the unique steps for saving .eps files.
Why can I only upload .eps files?
We have chosen to use .eps files because they have a greater degree of accuracy than other file formats. This means you have greater control over your design. We are currently investigating how to accept other file formats.
Got more questions?
Check out the Templates and .eps files FAQs.
Dave ten Have, CEO and co-founder of Ponoko has written a post for us on his take on the EPS file format and it’s importance in regards to using Ponoko. We’ve had a few questions about it so I think this is really timely. Thanks Dave!
When choosing file formats it is a fine balance between utility, ubiquity and availability. The utility lies in the question about whether or not the file can do what you want. The ubiquity lies in how many other tools use the file format. The availability lies in the hoops you have to jump though to get access to the file format. When creating the Ponoko service we looked a bunch of formats and settled on EPS (PDF, SVG and DXF were the other contenders).
EPS is a good format in that it is well supported in a lot of our target tools and it is has the accuracy that we need to produce products for our end users. The downside is that it is a bit used and abused. In all our testing we’ve had a great success rate with EPS in generating an end result that our users are happy with. Furthermore we’re into the game of remixing industrial design and to do that we need a file format that can be easily shared, again EPS has done us proud in that process.
The only area where we’ve had problems is with the Adobe CS suite of tools. Illustrator is a great product which I have had a crush on for years. I used version 10 as part of my demo at TechCrunch. When Adobe released later versions of the product they did something to the EPS file format that made it readable in only Adobe products - essentially making the file impossible to read in tools like GhostScript. This is a sad state of affairs because there is a vibrant eco-system of tools that sit in this space and now there are EPS files that are more equal than others. Pragmatically, Adobe are free to do what they want with the EPS format - they own it, but it causes a little heart ache. The tools I love are not playing nicely.
What does this mean for Ponoko users?
Well it means that you need to be a bit selective about the tools you use to generate your EPS files. This is what we recommend (*):
The aim for Ponoko is support a broad base of tools (we don’t want to get into the tools game) and we’re working hard on a solution to the CS curve ball. I hope to be able to announce something in the next little while. The obvious question is whether or not we’d be supporting other file formats. The answer is ‘yes’, but it’s a big task and is something that will take a little time.
(*) Please feel free to make your own recommendations.
