Joining Vectors that Just Won’t Join in VCarve, Aspire, and Cut 2D

Sometimes we get what looks like a design that’s ready for toolpathing, even though it’s not.  Trying to calculate even simple profile toolpaths just won’t work. Sometimes you’ll get an error message in VCarve, telling you that a certain number of vectors will be ignored if you proceed. In most cases, this error message is caused by open vectors that just need to be joined. But what do you do when they won’t join? [expand title=”Read More”]

Normally you can just select the open vectors and use the Join Open Vectors tool in the Edit Vectors section. But what if that doesn’t work?

In the video, I’ll show you some different ways of joining problem vectors. Along the way, I’ll also show you one way of identifying whether or not a design was imported from a DXF or DWG file.

I had a comment on the video the day after I posted it that asked me why I didn’t just adjust the tolerance in the Join Open Vectors tool form. It’s a legitimate question, and it could very well work – in fact, it would have taken care of several of the open vectors. The main reason I didn’t do that was that the video was not meant to be a demonstration of the Join Open Vectors tool – it was supposed to demonstrate why it’s worthwhile to zoom in and do a little bit of investigating to find out why the vectors won’t join in the first place. In the video we find 3 reasons why the vectors wouldn’t join; vectors that needed trimming to create separate vectors from a single vector, vectors that were too long and needed to be trimmed back, and an extra vector that just didn’t match up with the rest of the design. Adjusting the tolerance in the Join Open Vectors tool probably would have fixed the vectors that were just too long and needed to be trimmed back – it wouldn’t have fixed the other two though.

Please keep questions and comments like that coming, though! I get all of my video topics from your input, and questions like that are good examples.

Have a question or comment? Leave it in the comments below. If you’d prefer, go over to the Contact Us page and submit it to me there.

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