- Joined
- Oct 20, 2008
- Messages
- 5,547
I've been messing around some more with computer drawing knives. I find that my favorite lately is Inkscape. I found this free program on the excellent recommendation of Patrice Lemee.
Here's a bowie I drew up real quick with Jantz supply azurite/malachite composite handle and bold twist damascus blade. It doesn't look totally realistic, but gives an idea of the knife with the materials and is pretty easy to do. Dimensions are easy to add. If it's a knife shorter than 11", you can size it to scale and have the customer print out a life size image to review.
It's pretty intuitive, just playing around with it and reading some of the tutorial docs here and there will be enough to yield decent results in a reasonable amount of time.
You can easily create a line drawing of a knife, then modify.
I can go to Alpha Knife supply for instance, to look at a piece of wood a customer likes or just to window shop. I can save the image of any block of wood I like, then open it with paint and crop it down to just a block shaped piece of wood with no background.
In my Inscape knife drawing doc, I click "import." I select the wood block image I've just cropped. It shows up in my document, I drag the corners to resize it and move it into position above or below the handle of the knife. With the block image selected, I command "object to pattern" to take the wood picture and turn it into a fill pattern.
I take the line drawing and click on the handle. I select "object fill and stroke." I change the fill to the pattern I've just created by converting the wood image.
The handle is filled with the wood image.
I can go to any image of a mosaic pin on a seller site, save it, mod it, then drag it onto my wood handle. I can keep a stock of different pin and wood images, or other handle materials like green canvas micarta, to use for custom fills or pin effects at will.
I keep a file of my trademark, the one I sent Ernie Grospitch (I designed it in Inkscape), and I can resize/reorient it and drag it onto any knife I've drawn, to look at how I want to orient it on the blade, or what size I want to use. All of these visual options can be used in customer correspondence to settle on design elements.
"Oh, you want this bowie we've drawn up to have a redwood burl handle with a sundial mosaic pin and a horizontal large-size trademark? Check it out, tell me what you think."
Inkscape saves in SVG format, but you can easily save copies in anything from PDF to PNG format to send to people with standard software. These pics were uploaded to Picasa in .png format.
There is a TON of stuff I've not yet figured out or even tried with Inkscape, but these are just some relevant uses I've found thus far. I have Autocad 2010 as well, but I have a lot more fun with this program. Also, I find it easier to use than Autocad for a self-taught guy.
Here's a bowie I drew up real quick with Jantz supply azurite/malachite composite handle and bold twist damascus blade. It doesn't look totally realistic, but gives an idea of the knife with the materials and is pretty easy to do. Dimensions are easy to add. If it's a knife shorter than 11", you can size it to scale and have the customer print out a life size image to review.
It's pretty intuitive, just playing around with it and reading some of the tutorial docs here and there will be enough to yield decent results in a reasonable amount of time.
You can easily create a line drawing of a knife, then modify.
I can go to Alpha Knife supply for instance, to look at a piece of wood a customer likes or just to window shop. I can save the image of any block of wood I like, then open it with paint and crop it down to just a block shaped piece of wood with no background.
In my Inscape knife drawing doc, I click "import." I select the wood block image I've just cropped. It shows up in my document, I drag the corners to resize it and move it into position above or below the handle of the knife. With the block image selected, I command "object to pattern" to take the wood picture and turn it into a fill pattern.
I take the line drawing and click on the handle. I select "object fill and stroke." I change the fill to the pattern I've just created by converting the wood image.
The handle is filled with the wood image.
I can go to any image of a mosaic pin on a seller site, save it, mod it, then drag it onto my wood handle. I can keep a stock of different pin and wood images, or other handle materials like green canvas micarta, to use for custom fills or pin effects at will.
I keep a file of my trademark, the one I sent Ernie Grospitch (I designed it in Inkscape), and I can resize/reorient it and drag it onto any knife I've drawn, to look at how I want to orient it on the blade, or what size I want to use. All of these visual options can be used in customer correspondence to settle on design elements.
"Oh, you want this bowie we've drawn up to have a redwood burl handle with a sundial mosaic pin and a horizontal large-size trademark? Check it out, tell me what you think."
Inkscape saves in SVG format, but you can easily save copies in anything from PDF to PNG format to send to people with standard software. These pics were uploaded to Picasa in .png format.
There is a TON of stuff I've not yet figured out or even tried with Inkscape, but these are just some relevant uses I've found thus far. I have Autocad 2010 as well, but I have a lot more fun with this program. Also, I find it easier to use than Autocad for a self-taught guy.
