SVG to Mesh?

Hello all you exciting people. I am working with drawings which I am scanning, making into SVG files and then working with them in Blender. I have a few questions which I am sure you guys will be able to answer in no time.

  1. When I extrude the curves from an SVG and bevel, I get a pretty good looking thing. When I convert to mesh so I can do more with it, I run into problems, namely, I have a whole bunch of vertices that have not merged, so my horizontal faces are not attached to my angled faces, which are not attached to my vertical faces. Am I doing something wrong? If not, how can I get those guys to merge in an efficient manner?

  2. Should I even be extruding and beveling my SVG, or just convert to mesh then worry about extrusion and beveling?

  3. When I have my perfect extruded and beveled mesh, I want to attach it to something, in my instance, an independent mesh that I got from making my design an SVG file from an analogue graphic in the first place, to a ring or pendant that I’d like to have 3D printed. I can’t just pile them on top of each other and send it on over to makerbot, because that machine will give me a hot and freshly extruded mess. What is the most efficient way to attach those items so that Blender and Makerbot understand my file as one solid mesh? Boolean modifier? Is there a better way than a Boolean modifier?


What’s up with that? Just merge already!

Regarding your first and second questions, have you tried selecting all in edit mode, and running Remove Doubles (press W to bring up the menu)? I extrude and bevel SVG curves a lot and haven’t had a reason yet to convert to mesh first. I hope someone can help you with the third question.

I would recommend using retopo tools vs the boolean modifier, because the booleans can be very messy. this is the retopo process:
place your vertex, or vertexes in front of your model, then press the button on the main header that looks like a magnet.
In the options to the immediate right of that button, set it to ‘face’.
more buttons will now appear just to the right. press the one that looks like a square in front of a circle.
you can retopo at this point. if you move the vertexes, they will snap to the model surface underneath.
but in order to see things better, you should go into object buttons >> display settings >> x-ray
then, in your 3D window, while in edit mode, press N for a whole new set of buttons, and find the one that says ‘hidden wire’ in the shading panel.

If you can’t control properly amount of curve points you bring into Blender, import your image directly into Blender as a background and trace with Blender’s Bezier curve points or mesh vertices directly. You’ll get much more workable mesh as a result and, believe, it wont take so long at all.