Participating Frequently

Question

Creating an svg file for cnc use

Forum|Forum|7 months ago
May 30, 2025
1 reply
2578 views

I'm using Illustrator CS5

I haven't used illustrator for a very long time and not for the purposes of creating a file that will be used by a CNC machine.

I have an image of a tree that I want to carve into a wooden box's top. So far I have been able to import the image into illustrator and use the Live Trace function to turn it into a black and white silhouette. I then invert the black and white so that the trunk and branches will be carved into the material. So far, so good.

But the tree's image is rectangular and what I want is the carving area to be circular - i.e. surrounding the tree. I have been trying to use the Shape Builder tool to lop off the square corners leaving a circle around the tree. I have watched a number of videos online, but after drawing the circle around the tree's silhouette I can't seem to select those corners.

I have also tried the pathfinder tool, but have not had luck with that either.

I have tried creating a test by drawing a square, then adding a circle on top of it, and using the Shape Builder tool - and of course that works pefectly! So I'm trying to figure out what it is that I'm doing wrong.

Any help would be appreciated!

Regards,

Rick

How-to

Monika Gause

Community Expert

Could you perhaps show screenshots of what you have?

rgmcleod52Author

Participating Frequently

Here are some screenshots that show the steps I've taken.

Image of the tree after applying the Live Trace to create the silhouette. Threshold set to 220
Image after inverting the colors. Threshold set to 60
Adding a circle on top of the inverted image. Shown here the circle is white. The goal here is to create a black band around the inverted image. But even if I make the circle black the result is the same.
Using the Shape Builder. When moving the cursor over the two selected objects the screening only shows when over the circle, not the corners. I had hoped that the screening would be over each of the four black corners allowing me to erase these
The result of erasing the white (or black) circle while screened using the Shape Builder tool

I have duplicated these steps as a test using only a black square and putting a circle over it in a similar manner, but the circle doesn't end up white, it is black. But when I use the Shape Builder I can remove the corners which result in a black circle.

Not sure what I'm doing wrong here...

Rick

rgmcleod52Author

Participating Frequently

So there should be a visible black Circle around the tree?

You need to first Expand the Image Trace. When you select it, there should be a button with that name in the Control panel (the horizontal panel below the main menu)

Then ungroup

Then you need to delete the white objects. Select one of them and Select > Same > Fill color

Then draw a circle. Assign a black stroke of the width you need.

Object > Path > Outline stroke

Depending on your CNC machine you might or might not Select all the elements and make a compound path.

Monika,

The black circle around the tree is meant to be a circle around the irregular outline of the tree. The goal is to have the CNC machine carve out any of the black sections and leave the tree and branches at the surface level of the wood. This is shown in the attached image. Does that make sense?

But I have not been able to get an .svg file that gives me what I've shown...

So it seems that the expand and ungroup functions are key to this...

I can see that expanding and ungrouping creates the paths and makes separate entries for each path in the layers window.

Did you intend for the expand and ungroup to happen before inverting the colors, or after it?

And when you said to delete the "white objects" I'm not sure what you mean.

Rick

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded