Creating A Part Profile From An External Image

While working on a frame and panel front desk for an apartment building lobby, I ran into a problem. The architectural drawing called for several different moldings. I thought it would be easy. I checked out the web sites and found that one Company A had an AutoCAD drawing for each molding. Company B had an Adobe PDF. Company C had a paperback book of moldings, $28 at Amazon, but no other drawings. But since we only needed a couple of shapes, the only thing they could do was to trace the samples and fax them to us.

You can see that only height and width are given for molding, because that is all builders are really concerned with. A bit of the molding face is shown to help designers.

The same procedure will work for just about anything you want to trace.

Note: This instructable is for Alibre users and assumes that you are familiar with Alibre basics. If you are not I recommend that you work through the tutorials. They are very easy to follow and will have you up to speed in no time.

Step 1: Capture the Image.

We will use Molding #261. There are several ways to save an image. I have my personal favorite, Gadwin PrintScreen is set up to allow me to drag a box around the image I want and save it as a JPG. It really doesn’t matter how you save it as long as Alibre supports it.

This is from Alibre Help: “Several popular file types are supported: JPG, GIF, TIF, BMP, DIB, RLE, EMF, WMF, PNG, JPE, JPEG, JFIF and TIFF. Alibre Design does not support JPEG 2000 or lossless JPEGs, as well as some types of TIFF files.”

Comments

[Mr. INTJ]

Worked like a charm! Thank for doing this, Woodknot. I had to design an adapter for a brand A light ring and my brand B microscope. I tried measuring, but I needed a tight fit for the adapter, and the shape was not a simple one. By scanning the shape on my HP all-in-one printer, I was able to create a design, 3D print it, and got it right the first time. :-)

[owl box]

Company 'A' is Interstate Lumber Company 'B' is Dykes Company 'C' is CLC Lumber Co. Am I right? ;)

[woodknot]

Quite frankly, I can't remember which companies we "borrowed" them from. They were from some work we had done about the time the instructable was written. It all merges together after a while.

[sugeri-instructables]

WOW, this was a great instructable - you are an amazing teacher!  Not only creating a catalogue part but being able to bring in and trace a jpg file, I'm impressed.  Being able to bring a jpg into Alibre drawing was what I tried years ago and also had ALibre support try to show me this.  And now I just did it.  

With this capability I can now get anyone with a paint program to draw a vague outline and even hand dimension the sizes and email the jpg to me and I can scan it using that wonderful package that you mentioned and I have an accurate part - EXCELLENT!

I can't believe how simple things become for me when I finally get a good teacher.  Thanks.

This is nothing like Corel Draw - I am looking forward to the day when I can take my copy of X13 and put it all in the fire pit.  

With this package I will finally be able to see if something is going to fit before cutting it on my machines.

[woodknot]

The big difference is what you can do with the design once you bring it in to Alibre. It is more than just graphics, it is a true solid that can be used to build a 3D model that can be analyzed, checked for interfering parts, have dimensions driven by equations and spreadsheets, and can output a complete material list for manufacture. We think of it as virtual woodworking. We work through an entire woodworking project in a manner similar what we would do in the workshop, and solve design issues and proportions before even cutting the first board. We can rotate the model and examine it from all angles, hide parts or make them transparent, create exploded views to assist ourselves and other with understanding the construction, create 3D PDF files that a client can view on their own computer and manipulate in 3D, and create drawings for review and approval. Cross Sections, magnified details, and isometric views are created automatically. And it is accurate, without the fudging and inaccuracies of manual drawing. And, all this information is derived quite simply from the solid model itself. When the dimensions of the model change, the drawing updates automatically and the dimensions update on the drawing as well. No more laboring over making sure all the views really reflect the design correctly, no more erasing lines that are no longer needed, and adding the new lines and dimensions. It is quite different, and a significant improvement from 2D CAD and graphics programs. It takes a bit more effort to learn, but in the end is well worth the trouble. Take if from someone that has spent their life making a living doing drafting from an age where a mechanical pencil and electric eraser was hi-tech, I will not go back to manual drawing, nor even a 2D drawing package.

[Tatisimo]

This is the same method I use in CorelDraw to renew very old drawings! Takes a long time, but gives 'em quality. I oughta try CAD design someday, doesn't look much different than CorelDraw.

[woodknot]

Thanks for your comment. In many ways CAD programs are similar to CorelDraw but with a big difference. Both types of programs will allow you to do vector graphics. CAD programs are for precise design work rather than just graphics. Alibre Design has the ability to work with parametric driven models. For example: A simple 2D rectangle is 2"W x 4"H. You could dimension it like that and both dimensions are independent of each other. Or you could say that it is 2"W x (2*W). This ties the height to the width. Each time the width changes the height automatically changes with it. That may be more than you wanted to know. I think I see another Instructable.