Hi All,

Firstly I have watched and searched for ages so this isn't my first port of call, I'm here out of frustration!

I have a large 510mm x 730mm drawing made in inkscape, I want to section this into A4 chunks for laser cutting a template. I have seen many videos about clipping but these all use "print" as the final step so I assume this works OK. However I need to save that clipped section into a new SVG file for loading into meerk40t (a laser cutter/engraving program)

No matter what I try when I save/export what I think it just a small section that would for on A4 to a file, when I load it into meerk40t I can see the entire image!

This has been driving me crazy but I'm sure it's doable and probably someone will find this easy to explain.

Thanks 

This means you can't use clips to crop your image.

You'll have to use boolean ops to divide image into multiple sections. Maybe shapebuilder tool may help.

Thanks David248,

I'm not the best with inkscape, is there any videos you know of that would show me or can you describe step by step what to do?

Thanks

All depends on the complexity of your original SVG. Could you upload an example file, please ?

Before answering, let's say that you want to see how your laser cutting device sees your svg file, use outline display mode.

Here is the file, thanks for taking the time to look / answer appreciate it a lot.

Ok : I your device handles A4 svg, I would :

1- draw eight A4 pages.

• Use page tool, change page size to A4 (landscape, for example) : dropdown on left of control bar.
• Add  as many pages as needed to cover all design (page tool, "+" icon on left of control bar, next to dropdown). For clarity, ensure all pages are nicely arranged 1-2-3-4-5...and not mixed 1-3-4-5 : in documents properties, you can enable Show big page labels to quickly check).
• Use snapping to : pages to place each page correctly (snap to corners of pages).

2- Turn design into simple cutter-friendly svg
Once done, I would work on the design to turn it into something divideable

• select texts, do path > object to path*.
• select curved path ** : give it the stroke width you want and eventually rounded caps (fill and stroke panel). Then do path > stroke to path.
• select all and do path > union. Have a look where letters or paths meet (here the G of "testing" and curved path). You may need to open different segments and the unite some nodes).
• Now you design consists of one unique path : place it on the canvas the way you find appropriate to avoid cutting too much letters in halves.

3- Draw the cutting path
Once done, let's draw one path that will meet pages borders and will be used to cut the design.

Use bezier tool, (still with snapping to pages enabled). Here I choosed 2 columns and 4 lines of landscape A4 pages : I draw one vertical center line and three horizontal lines. Then select theses 4 lines and do path > combine (you could also draw the first line, then hold shift key when begining a new line : the new line will be combined to the first, and so on).

4 - Cut design
Now you should have two paths when looking in object's panel : your design, and the dividing path you've just created.
Select both (dividing path is atop) and do path > division. This should divide you design into pages.
For some reason I will think about later, this does not always work fine : some parts of letters may be still combined across 2 pages : select all (ctrl+A) and do path > split path to cure theses issues once for all. Optionaly you can rectangle select all paths on each page and combine them, give a fill to check if everything is ok and remove fill.

5 - Export into A4 svgs
Then do edit > export and on export panel choose batch export tab then the tab pages to export design into 8 A4 svgs.

* I don't know what's for final idea, but for a stencil, you may have to deal with hollow letters (e, o...).
** what was text is now shapes with no fill : a compound path with an outer sub-path and an inner sub-path : you curved path is actually an open simple path : first problem your cutter will only make a cut there, and second problem, there will be issues if you combine it with "texts" (actually compound paths, nows), when doing the division step.

Hi David,

Thanks for taking the time to help, as you say there are a lot of steps and potential issues,I started to work through your tutorial but soon got out my depth and thought "laser cutter enthusiasts must have had this issue" so went searching again and found the site below that works quite well. Still some letter issues like the center of O etc but this is manageable. 

Rasterbator

Really appreciate the help and your effort.

Hi Scarr,

I guess rasterbator gives you a bitmap image, not a vector one.

Don't be afraid by the long description I made of the process. I takes less than one minute to do.

Notice that you can quickly do the same job as rasterbator, without uploading your design :

• draw a rectangle to A4 size.
• open LPE's panel, apply it tiling LPE, tick Split element option. Move the path to place it as you want.
• once done, do path > object to path, then right clic > select same : fill and stroke to select all rectangles created
• with all rectangles selected, open export panel, tab batch export, click on selection button, choose png and the correct saving folder....

I did'nt realize but you could also use the slice LPE to quickly do the job and having an svg output.