deleting lines outside of a shape/mask

[armaleim]

hello! 

trying to make a pattern and want to delete everything that exists outside of a chosen section of a shape/mask. 

it's easy to do visually but then when exported the hidden lines remain part of the file. it's going into a laser cutter so i need to keep it as vectors (can't flatten) but also for everything outside of the shape to be gone gone gone! 

sorry if this is a really nooby question i just cant quite figure it out! so far i'm just having to go line by line cutting it at the right point, which is just rather time consuming. 

file attatched :) 

 

basically i have this: 

and need to turn it into this: 

 

pattern one.afdesign

[GarryP]

Welcome to the forums @armaleim

As far as I know, if you want the output to be exactly what you see – with no hidden lines/curves – then you will have to use the various Geometry functionalities and the Node Tool – and maybe some other things – to manually break the shapes apart and delete what is not wanted. (Keep the original so you can make modifications more easily in the future.)

Do a forum search for “laser cutter” (without the quotes) and see if anyone has posted any better advice or tips on this - it comes up frequently.

[armaleim]

4 hours ago, GarryP said:

Welcome to the forums @armaleim

As far as I know, if you want the output to be exactly what you see – with no hidden lines/curves – then you will have to use the various Geometry functionalities and the Node Tool – and maybe some other things – to manually break the shapes apart and delete what is not wanted. (Keep the original so you can make modifications more easily in the future.)

Do a forum search for “laser cutter” (without the quotes) and see if anyone has posted any better advice or tips on this - it comes up frequently.

yeah, thats what ive been doing so far, ends up super neat but a bit of a pain when masking to complex shapes haha

thanks for the tips! 

james x