Circuit Launch

Learn the basics of Adobe illustrator to design for CNC tools. This is a basics class that will focus on vector management to provide useable files for CNC tools such as a laser cutter, CNC router, Vinyl cutter, etc.

Bring your own laptop with any version of Illustrator installed.

Learn the basics of Adobe illustrator to design for CNC tools. This is a basics class that will focus on vector management to provide useable files for CNC tools such as a laser cutter, CNC router, Vinyl cutter, etc.

The most frustrating thing about learning CNC is prepping your design for real world constraints of the various CNC tools. This class will walk you through the basic steps of understanding what it takes to prepare a file, either from scratch or an existing design, so it will successfully work on a variety of CNC tools.

Adobe illustrator once understood, is the most efficient, powerful tool, to work with vectors, and design exactly what you want to produce.

We will cover:
Vectors vs Bitmaps
Basic drawing tools
Stroke and Fill and how it relates to CNC output
Manipulating nodes, curves, anchors
Pathfinder tool
Align tool
RGB color codes for multilayer CNC paths
Text manipulation
Working with pen tool for advanced vector design and tracing
Tracing tool (and how bad it is)
Outputting files to DXF and other formats that are ready for Laser cutters.

Manipulating vectors is required to be able to use CNC tools. Learn the basics to build your foundation of digital design so you can spend less time getting your designs to just “work”.

Requirements:
Bring your own laptop with Adobe illustrator pre-installed. (Adobe offers a 7day trial if you do not own a license)

No design or drawing experience is needed as this is a basics class. If you have a grasp of tracing using a pen tool in illustrator this class may be too basic for you, however it will focus on skills required for CNC design.