Overly Complex Tool Path

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Hey guys, I’m currently working on a pretty detailed carve. Here is some info and the situation I am in.

I am currently using INKSCAPE to design a lot of the work I am carving. Many of my designs are complex and have a lot of Nodes / Independant lines. When importing my SVG files and generating tool-paths, the bit is raising and moving a lot between paths. It seems the bit spends more time in the air moving about than it does carving.

I have a decent amount of experience with Inkscape and CAD, but I have limited knowledge on optimizing my drawings for efficient CNCing. Is there a way to simplify my image so that much of the cut can be done in a single path opposed to hundreds?

I’d also like to add that i can’t even load the entire svg image, I need to break it down into sections in order for it the generate a tool path. When I try to generate the whole SVG file it really bogs down easel and freezes.

I look forward to hearing from you guys, thank you in advance for any assistance.

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That is just the downfall to Easel, it doesn’t make the best decisions sometimes. How complex is your file and how long did you let Easel write paths? There are several of the Mayan calendars that take an hour to generate the tool paths.

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Hey Steve, thank you for your response. I let Easel sit for about 15 min before I decided to stop it. My file has a lot of details that I will be using a 1/32 bit for. Now that I know Easel can take a long time, I will be sure to let it do its thing.

Here’s some good news though. I was able to figure out a design method to help with the complex tooling paths. I went into my INKSCAPE image and joined all of the nodes that were touching into a single node. By doing this I effectively cleaned up the image to convert dozens of lines into a “single” line. This was very time consuming on my end, however moving forward I will do this from the very beginning and take more care when designing.

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