Franksville Wisconsin N-scale modutrak module buildout

[lashedup]

Ok, this is for a structure that Mike Skibbe's dad Marshall is building. He's a civil engineer, so yes, he counted the actual bricks on the prototype and drew them all in Autocad. Mike sent me the .dwg file and I imported it into Illustrator to print it. Scale bricks are tiny. It is amazing what our eyes and minds have come to expect in n-scale. This is also approaching the limits of what the printer can handle when it comes to fine details.



And this is with N-scale Architects current brick sheet for comparison:



- jamie

[wcfn100]

What material is that?

Jason

[SebastianLee]

That came out really well.  Joints are about perfect.  Did He use the brick hatch in Autocad?  Wonder if drawing multiple lines on top of each other in a X from corner to corner for the door knock-outs would help.  Does the cutter follow the path that the line is drawn? Like if a line is drawn from 0,0 to 0,10 does it cut from 0,0 to 0,10? If so, then drawing a line in one direction and then laying another line on top of it in the reverse direction may help with deeper cuts. Old pen plotters used to work like that.

[DKS]

Excellent. Really excellent. If I wasn't already convinced to get one, this would have pushed me over the edge. There's a station I've been wanting to build for decades (http://picasaweb.google.com/dks2855/HopewellNewJersey#) and I think this will at last allow me to do it accurately.

[Zox]

Ok, this is for a structure that Mike Skibbe's dad Marshall is building. He's a civil engineer, so yes, he counted the actual bricks on the prototype and drew them all in Autocad. Mike sent me the .dwg file and I imported it into Illustrator to print it.

How long did it take to "print" that wall?

[wcfn100]

Mine's on order.

Thanks Jamie for all the legwork.

Jason

[lashedup]

How long did it take to "print" that wall?

A good 20 minutes for all four walls. It was printed on .010 styrene. The printer was working hard and it sure sounded abusive making all those vertical cuts so small - cut, move, lift, move, down, cut, move, lift, move, down, etc., etc. The thing was bobbing up and down like a sewing machine. Plus I'll have to take a look at the blade under a loupe and see how it looks compared to a fresh one. Overall though it plowed through it. I'll still take replacing abused blades over doing something like this by hand any day.

Good question on how it treats the order in which things we're drawn. I don't think it follows the order it was created in, but I could be wrong. I'll have to do a test and see. That would open the possibility to get more out of it. I know if you double a line up, it will cut it twice. At the very least I could create a second layer with a cross hatch pattern that it could cut the second time around. Although I think with something this small the opportunity to have it wonder off registration just a hair might rule it out.

So far I'm really, really pleased and impressed. We'll have to start a resource thread (break out parts of this one) just for the Silhouette SD so we can share settings, tips, tricks and more. I should also call Silhouette and get some free blades for helping them sell a bunch of these.

-jamie

[Sokramiketes]

Did He use the brick hatch in Autocad? 

No hatch, just straight line work on this one.

[SkipGear]

Jamie,
 At least with Corel Draw, the cutter should draw bottom objects first working its way to the top. You can set if one object is in front of another. The front most object will be the last to cut. I set object order on purpose when setting up for vinyl stickers to speed up cutting time so it's not wasting time moving from the top to the bottom of the page and back. It also improves registration because the more moves the machine makes, the more chance is has to drift tracking. I cut 8"x12" decal sheets for R/C car racing that can take up to 15 minutes per sheet to cut because of the number of actual decals on the sheet. The pickup / move usually takes as long per step as the actual cut.

[lashedup]

So if you were doing bricks like these, how would you optimally draw it out?

[SkipGear]

Are the bricks drawn as individual rectangles or is it simplified with long straight horizontal lines and verticle hashes?

Individual blocks is probably the most detailed way to do it but also the most time consuming. Every brick with an adjacent brick is getting the mortar line drawn twice. Once for the original brick, once for the bricks next to it. You should be able to cut down the wear and tear and cut time by either going to long horizontals and then short vertical hashes or draw every other block.

To draw every other block, first you would need to draw the horizontal mortar line for the length of the row. The easiest way would be to draw a rectangle the height of the brick for the length of the course then come back and draw every other brick. You would still double up on the horizontal lines but usually they are a little deeper than the verticles anyhow.



The top drawing shows using a rectangle for each course then drawing in every other brick. That should cut down time by about 30 percent and make it easier to set the cut order. Make a master brick coarse then copy and paste it to the drawing. Each paste will be on top of the next so if you start in at the top of the building and work your way down, the cutter will also.

The lower drawing shows the most efficient way but also the hardest to control the cut order and you can run into the issue of over run as shown earlier.

One other thing is try to begin and end your basic brick shape in the middle of a straight, not on the corner. In Corel I do this by cutting the vector on the line that I want to start and then joining it back together. The changes the origin point to the point you recently joined. I think the newer versions of corel allow you to do that with one click.

If the bricks are all like that and the bricks are the last thing cut, the knife will always be pointed the right way when the next brick starts. If you end on a corner, the knife will have to turn 90 degress on the start of each cut and can lead to an odd shaped corner on each brick. If you do your bricks like the lower drawing, again, make sure you cut all the horizontal first, then all the verticle. Also make sure all the cuts either start from the same side or leave your self some over run so the knife has time to turn before heading back into the good part of the part.

That said, the output you got is excellent. I'm not sure all the work in preping the drawings would be worth it for a one off model. If it was something you were making multiple copies of, definitely, but for single structures, it may take more time to adjust the drawing for efficency than you save at the cutter.

Using a cutter is as much of an art as learning to get the most out of an Alps printer.

[SkipGear]

BTW - Let me know what works best because I have this to do eventually....



It's all brick, with a spanish tile roof. Especially fun will be the detail below the belt line where the brick tapers out.

[Sokramiketes]

The lower drawing shows the most efficient way but also the hardest to control the cut order and you can run into the issue of over run as shown earlier.

Ok, your optimal way is exactly how this was drawn in autocad.  I don't know if it transfered over to AI properly, but in looking at what was cut, the long horizontals were cut continuously with the short verticals cut next.  That was probably all the pecking that was driving Jamie nuts while it was being cut. 

The earlier example with the over-run was actually on a larger machine, a 36" vinyl plotter that I was playing with.  I never tried to fix the overrun in the drawing itself, I was playing with knife offsets and cutting blades before I had to give the machine back.  Didn't have time to fix the offset in the drawing.  But, it looks like Jamie's machine doesn't need to compensate, which is huge.

[lashedup]

BTW - Let me know what works best because I have this to do eventually....



It's all brick, with a spanish tile roof. Especially fun will be the detail below the belt line where the brick tapers out.

This is a beautiful building (and very well done illustration btw). How do you plan to handle the bricks that flare at the bottom?


- jamie

[SkipGear]

I've built a cardboard mock up of it, most of the way. I have adjusted the angles on the bottom sections and plan to just score and fold out the bottoms. There is a concrete belt line that will be a thin piece of styrene to cover up the area of the fold if it doesn't look quite right any how. The worst part will be the corner and attempting to make the brick match and wrap. Here is the real thing...



It has been repainted since this shot and they added a metal roof to simulate the tile roof that it was originally built with. It looks pretty much as it did in the 40's now.

I need to adjust my windows to fit comercially available windows now. I'm not real fond of scratch building a dozzen or more 16 panel double hung windows.