I've been guilty of taking for granted all the cool things we get from our CAD software, but I have to step back and give credit to this little overlooked tool that's been saving me so much time, the Picture to Sketch tool. It's under the Tools menu and accessible under the Insert Picture popup.
This clever tool will help you trace any high resolution and high contrast image and convert that trace path into a sketch. Which you can use to create 3D features within your design. I did just that in my recent project at the 3DEXPERIENCE Lab.
We were asked to create a few awards to be gifted to deserving members of a team. These awards would be inspired by ones that were presented to winners of an internal innovation award.
So I found a high resolution and high contrast logo for Dassault Systemes. Imported the image into xDesign. Used the Picture to Sketch tool. It recognized the shape quickly and I added a boundary sketch to encompass the entire logo.
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With the proper dimensions entered, I was able to do the necessary extrusions and export the necessary DXF to use on the laser cutter.
After a design check, we decided that we liked the acrylic look more than the moss look.
So I finished cutting all the inlay blue acrylic using the same exported DXF. Cleaned and sanded the pieces. Then glue it all together.
I did have a slight adjustment that needed to be addressed and will be a learning experience to take with me for future makes. I decided not to CNC inserts from a thicker stock but instead, laser cut the bottom layer from a 12mm basswood ply and laser cut the layer with the cutouts from a 6mm basswood ply. When I glued the two pieces together, because I did not have the right setup to apply uniform pressure across all the pieces, some of the layers had a slight gap. But with the suggestion (from @S) of using a sharpie to fill in the gap, I was able to conceal the minor booboo and still produce an acceptable set of awards.
