WELCOME!

It is hard to believe that it was almost ten years ago I witnessed a CNC router in action for the very first time. I was fascinated and simply had to have one! Although I had been in the creative end of the three dimensional sign business for most of my life I didn't really know what I would do with one of these machines - but I just knew it could do fantastic stuff.

Along with the CNC router I discovered the wonderful material called Precision Board and the glues, primers and other companion products they offer. Since then we have gone through many tons of the material using it in most signs and projects we tackle. This journal will chronicle our many adventures both past, present and future. I'll talk from the perspective of someone who pushes these products to the creative limit on a daily basis. I'll be adding to the stories two or three times each week. -dan

Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Using EnRoute to create working files and presentation art

We use EnRoute in all kinds of ways to help us in our work. In doing so we create accurate scale renderings for presentations and at the same time create the vectors we need for our plasma cutting and CNC routing. This saves a whole to of time at the design stage of our projects.

Currently we have a project going through the design stage that is a good example. It will be a still for a pub. We travelled to our customers location (4000 miles distant) and while there took measurements and did some sketching of our ideas. This is the very quick sketch for the still which I did on location. The still will fit into a room that is fourteen and a half feet tall. It needs to be built in sections so it will fit around an existing post. A 'standing table' will go around it. The customer requested we keep it to around four feet in diameter to preserve valuable floor space. The top can extend outside of that measurement as needed.

 

Once I was back in my studio I set to work. I imported the drawing into EnRoute and used it as reference as I worked. The tall rectangle is 6'8" tall (same height at a door) to keep the headroom safe. I worked up the vectors, designing the bulk of the vectors we will eventually need to cut the steel. Once I was done I saved the drawing for future reference and also grabbed a screen capture.



I then imported the screen captured drawing into PhotoShop and traced over this to create the rendering which we would present to our clients. The whole process only took a couple of hours and in the process we created a great presentation piece and also are well on the way to having the necessary vectors to build the project.