my name is Frank and I am from Germany. Originally engineer, starting now, as many kids tools break and I need stuff for my woodworking cellar, with 3D printing.
I have some pictures (see example attached) called in german “Scherenschnitt” / silhouette which I would like to print as a 3D model appr. 1 cm thick (to be determined).
From my understanding, I must cut out the black picture and transfer it into a vector graphic which SU can read?
Would this then be detected in SU as a surface which I simply can “pull-out” with the tool in SU?
If so, is there a simple way to do this, best w/o an additional software required or on board win tool?
There are various applications such as Inkscape which can create a path from the border between black and white pixels and then export a .dxf file that you can import into SketchUp. You could also use TIG’s Image Trimmer in his SKM Tools from Sketchucation. It requires that you import a PNG image with black and transparent pixels into SketchUp. For that to work well you would need larger, higher res images than the one you shared.
Thanks @DaveR
I understood Inkscape and will give it a try.
What I did not understand was the TIG’s Image Trimmer. So I would need first to make a PNG out of the JPG?
Of course, the target pics are much better, it was just a random pic to let you understand what I am talking about.
Yes. In an image editor like PhotoShop or GIMP. I use PaintDotNet for that. The white pixels have to be made transparent. JPGs don’t support transparency but PNGs do.
That’s good. Image Trimmer would create a pretty rough result with that tiny image.
FWIW, I traced the bitmap in Inkscape and saved a dxf file which I then imported into SketchUp to get this.
