By-passing Vectric’s Tiling requirement for Vcarve Desktop using OpenBuilds CAM, or other CAM

In the past week or so, there have been several questions regarding tiling. If you have Vcarve Desktop and are willing to add OpenBuilds CAM to your workflow, this is a quick and easy way to avoid tiling. If there is a better way, please let me know. I recently tried to do this with a .dxf file from online in Fusion360 and the program would constantly freeze up.

I love Vectric Vcarve Desktop and use it all the time for 3d Carves, 3D rotary carves, and two sided carves. There probably is no simpler software you can OWN for those processes with great online tutorials from both Vectric, and many YouTubers. However, I will probably never carve a 3D item larger than 625 by 625 which is Vectric's self imposed limit for Vcarve Desktop. If I do, I will tile it. This is why I purchased that version. So, every once in a while I find a Vcarve (.crv) format project online (Etsy or other website) that is cut from a flat panel that I want to cut that is larger than 625 by 625. Obviously this is not necessary if the file is already a vector file unless you need to break apart the .dxf components to fit individual parts on your machine. I did this with a chair file I purchased that had everything laid out for a larger machine. I basically devided it into multiple smaller .dxf files. This will also work to eliminate extraneous items added to the .dxf that may make it larger than 625x625 (instructions, dimensions, etc.). Sometimes this will be enough to get it into those 625x625 constraints.

Step 1:
My work around is to open that Vectric .crv file (or other file) in Vcarve Desktop and ignore the warning. Then click on “OK” for both the warning and the Job Setup (Red arrows).



Step 2:
You will get another warning. Just click “OK”.



You will then be brought to the “Drawing” page:



Step 3:
Drag a box around the portion of the .dxf you want to save. In this case I want the whole thing. But sometimes, downloaded .dxf files will have other items not needed like material dimensions, instructions, or text of the website they are from. This will eliminate the unneeded “garbage.” You can see the very faint box I dragged around the .dxf components I want. Once I release the mouse button, it will be highlighted in red?? (or is that purple?):





Step 4:
Now export it as a .dxf



Step5:
You can now open this in OpenBuilds CAM (or whatever CAM you use) and cut without tiling if your work surface is large enough. This file was resized by me to 750mm by 920. Well outside Vcarve Desktop’s limit.



Eliminating the Garbage:
Here is and example of eliminating the “garbage.” I picked this .dxf for this tutorial just as an example because I knew it would have “garbage” with it. As you can see, it makes the cut area way larger than it needs to be. Obviously, you could ignore this and not create tool paths for it, but some files that have this may cause the warning and tiling requirement even if you do not want to carve those areas. So, highlight the “garbage”:



And delete it:



To save a new, clean .dxf, highlight the components you want, and return to Step 3 above. This may reduce the .dxf dimensions enough of your project to no longer need tiling. If not use OB CAM



I will put up another tutorial on splitting apart .dxf files for laser cutters if your work area is limited.