I recently used Inkscape to make a new face for a customers sign. I had a coworker take a picture of the good face, traced it in Inkscape, cleaned it up, and used the result to cut vinyl for the new face. I have a 24" cutter and the face required 31", so I had to use someone else's 60" cutter. Imagine my suprise when his big $ software wouldn't import svg, or emf. I had to install Inkscape on his pute, export my artwork as png, which he revectorized, and cleaned. For some reason eps wouldn't import correctly. Took him over an hour to do what took me less than 15 minutes in Inkscape, despite his excellent proficiency. Really suprised me how bad his software's vectorizer was. After everything was done, I wanted to try and recreating the face from scratch, rather than tracing. Here's a pic of the good old face, to help visualize what I'm trying to accomplish.
The face is about 14' wide.

Looks really simple, right? I firsted created the hot dog shapes in Turbocad, using measurements taken from the sign. Exported the drawing to Inkscape and tried text on path. I couldn't get the text to properly fill the hot dog arc. Usually it wasn't wide enough. If I tried to scale the text on the path, it's path would scale as well. Trying to scale before text on path was useless. Breaking the text, and using the place on path extension was closer, but having to undo and change scale repeatedly sucked. I couldn't get results that were satisfactory. I'm looking for dead-on precision, not eyeballing, close enough. If I was doing origional artwork, then I would make the hotdogs fit the text, instead of the otherway around.

I tried other SVG editors, with no success. I could probably do it in TurboCad 11--no text on path function--the hard way. But I would like to do it with Inkscape. Any suggestions, tips or strategies? Or is Inkscape just the wrong tool for the job?

So far, Inkscape has worked out very well for doing vinyl for company vehicles, logos, and such. It's far superior than the software that came with the cutter.

It sounds like you have text on path figured out, you just can't make it match perfectly. If you're not using the exact same font then I expect you won't be able to avoid this problem. I beleive in some cases graphics like this don't use a font, rather each letter is drawn.

You could try using pattern along path instead, but it may not be much better.

I know this off topic but what is a cutter?

Biggest issue I'd have thought is that the text is using a font which your unlikely to have.
Once you've put your text on your path you can grab the text tool, select it all, and use the toolbar to change teh font size, but unless its the right font its not going to match up properly.

capnhud wrote:I know this off topic but what is a cutter?

A machine that cuts things I think they hook up to a PC like a printer and they'll cut material based on the shape of your drawing.

microUgly wrote:

capnhud wrote:I know this off topic but what is a cutter?

A machine that cuts things I think they hook up to a PC like a printer and they'll cut material based on the shape of your drawing.

This is the vinyl cutter I'm using, only in like new condition. http://www.dataworks.gr/used/images/roland2.htm

It works exactly like a plotter, only using a knife instead of a pen. I load up a roll of vinyl--basically a big sticker--and it cuts my artwork. Excess vinyl is "weeded" out leaving just the artwork.

This site gives an alright tutorial on applying vinyl. Should give you a good idea of what I'm doing. http://www.enjoythedrive.com/content/?id=10697 I tried to find something better, but this should be good enough.

Simarilius wrote:Biggest issue I'd have thought is that the text is using a font which your unlikely to have.
Once you've put your text on your path you can grab the text tool, select it all, and use the toolbar to change teh font size, but unless its the right font its not going to match up properly.

As old as that face is there is a good chance the font was drawn by hand. I reallize I'm not going to be able to be exact, but I want to be "true" to the origional. I was trying to use bold Arial, which looks really close except for the minor differences in the M and R. But the font isn't wide enough, which I was trying to fix by scaling X. Looks like text on path isn't the way to go.

Can you show us what you've made? It's difficult to picture exactly how it's not lining up the same. It might give us some ideas on how to improve it.