Hi All,

I have just traced a complex image which is a matrix of rectangles. I've messed around with the "Trace" options a lot - but the problem I'm finding is that there are extra, superfluous nodes in the centre of each straight line.

Sure - I could just select them and delete them. But there are 5700 rectangles to deal with - with 22800 superfluous nodes. I am in my 40's and am unsure that I'll live long enough to achieve this.

So I tried "Simplify" - but of course what I end up with aren't nice, crisp rectangles, they're strange blobs. Now I want to put this data into a laser cutter - so straight lines are essential, or the cut time will be HUGE. Hence my pickiness - it doesn't matter that it LOOKS right - it has to BE right.

Is there a plugin or a technique which will allow me to remove all superfluous (coplanar) nodes in a small number of operations? (Ideally, one operation!) All the nodes in question, including the wanted and unwanted nodes, are cusp nodes - I just want the ones at the corners and don't want the ones in the middle of straight lines.

Suggestions?

Thanks,

James

Welcome James!

If you use Simplify once, the distortion is usually minimal. But after that it definitely will distort the image. That's what it's made to do, as far as I understand.

There may in fact be no way to get the result you want. You could try the centerline trace using this tracer: http://www.roitsystems.com/cgi-bin/autotrace/tracer.pl. Inkscape doesn't have a centerline trace option. However, it tends to get wacky around line intersections, and it sounds like there might be a lot of intersections.

If you could show us a screenshot, there might be some clever way to select just the right nodes that need to be deleted. "Matrix of rectangles" is a little cryptic, unless you literally mean a grid composed of squares, rather than lines. I can't quite visualize the situation.

But even if a quick way could be found to delete the nodes, it still won't make the file like you want. If you zoom in far enough, you'll see that some of the sharp corners have become rounded. Some of that can be avoided by using a very large original image. But I don't think it can be done perfectly like you want. Trace Bitmap just isn't made to be able to do that.

Depending on what kind of matrix it is, it might be fairly simple to just draw it though! Well, unless the matrix is the output from some kind of calculation, like a special kind of graph or something.

Anyway, maybe we could come up with something, if we could see the image.