inkscaping to ponoko
I’ve paused from the playing of Zelda this weekend. Instead, I’ve been deeply engaged uncovering the mysteries of Inkscape, an open-source vector drawing tool.
Having scored a Ponoko beta invitation – or more correctly, Becky has, as I never quite made it to the beta meet-up – we needed to find a way to submit drawings to a certain spec given an impending deadline. My theory was that Becky could have the ideas, and that I could operate the drawing software. Having neither Illustrator, Freehand, or CorelDraw at hand, I thought I’d try using Inkscape. I’ve used it before for a few things, but not for anything more complex than a few lines and boxes.
I also thought that Inkscape would be a nice choice for Ponoko’s makers: it’s free; it runs on Mac, PC and Linux, and has a cracking good manual (the book version of which I have printed and bound for easy reference).
It turns out that playing with Inkscape is a lot of fun. I came up with an idea of my own that I’ve now finished the drawings for. Whether it’ll work or not is another question which may or may not be answered.
Meanwhile Becky’s still working on hers, having been abandoned temporarily while I did mine. She’s grasped Inkscape pretty quickly. And to help, I went down to Tricky‘s and scored one of their no-name drawing tablets (the XH1913 and actually an Aiptek – get the latest Mac and PC drivers here). It’s good enough for the job at hand, and connects happily to all our machines.
So at the very least, Ponoko has made us try some new stuff. Hopefully we can make the deadline, but if we don’t, we’ll have a good headstart when it comes out of beta.
Stuart
21 September 2007, 15:32 #
How did you manage to open the Ponoko templates with Inkscape? From my understanding, Inkscape can save-as/export to .eps, but it can’t open .eps files. Did you just create your designs based on the specifications without actually using the downloadable templates?
Alan
21 September 2007, 20:35 #
Yes – if I remember rightly that’s exactly what I did.
It looks like better eps import/export is coming for Inkscape though.
Rada
22 September 2007, 06:11 #
Was able to open pokono eps templates with Xara Extreme (also open-source) Once pokono is back up for logins I’ll try to find out what format can use as a transition without losing vital information (i.e. save as tiff or something, then open in Inkscape to merge work with template.) Tried xara and adobe illustrator eps exports from xara but Inkscape 0.45 with pstoedit 3.44 Skencil 0.6.17 would not import them.
Alan
23 September 2007, 17:27 #
I’ve had a bit of a play with this this afternoon too. I could not open or convert the supplied EPS templates using pstoedit (installed on my Mac via MacPorts – a story in itself, that one).
I think perhaps it’s something to do with the templates themselves – I’ve been able to import the Winerack to Inkscape OK.
We should probably talk to Ponoko about this. Some Inkscape-ready templates would be handy.
Alan
25 September 2007, 19:50 #
And it would seem the answer to why pstoedit could not convert some of the Ponoko templates might have something to do with versions of Illustrator.
Murat
28 September 2007, 20:16 #
hi there,
I am having the same problem (inkscape user and ponoko eps files) and here’s a question:
someone said “based on the specifications”, but how do you know the specs to fit your design into?
Is there a part of the website where they tell you what to mind? Or did you open the EPS files with a different app so you knew the specs?
curious
Mu
Alan
29 September 2007, 11:36 #
The sizes are listed in the PDF download. What I don’t know is the width of the margin before we get to the “safe area”.
However, some kind soul has exported the files into SVG for us here.
These seem to work fine.
Alan
18 October 2007, 08:45 #
And even better, Ponoko have now published an official set of Inkscape-specific guide files. Great news!
Alan
7 March 2008, 22:39 #
There are also some drivers on the European Aiptek site here.