Manufacturing Information Solutions

[CNCJimmy7]

I have a friend who owns his own company cutting foam blocks to make
seat cushons for the RV industry here in town.

He has a bunch of old cardboard templants that he uses as patterns for
the cushions. He would like to be able to somehow trace those patters
(they range from 1 foot to 4 foot, just think of any seat you would find
in a motorhome).

On his smaller templants he just uses his mouse and clicks on various
parts of the cardbaord to make points then brings those into AutoCAD and
tries to make them into smooth curves, which he can't always.

Any cheap solutions come to mind on how to "trace" those and convert
them into smooth services?

[dawn]

You could do the following.

1. Trace the cardboard templates on to large E size paper.
2. Go to Kinkos or some service outfit and the latest E size plotters all
have an option for a scanner. This will create a bitmap image.
3. Open the bitmap image in Autocad or similar load the bitmap image in as a layer.
4. In Autocad, create a spline and use the mouse to click bitmap image.
5. Turn off the bitmap layer and you are done!

Let me know if you need any more help after you get it scanned.
_________________
Dawn Mitchell
Manufacturing Information Solutions
www.mis-group.com

[JamieR]

Let us know if that works, I have a similar situation and I think this solution would work as well, so let me know.
_________________
++++++++++++++
Thanks!