Emboss or Engrave Image

[Vagulus]

In past years there was considerable discussion about embossing or engraving images with Inventor (last I saw people were using AI2014).  Usually the discussion descended to some sort of hacking process involving manually tracing the image into some type of vector-based line drawing (DXF ?) which is not on AI2018's list of image types anyway.  Has there been some progress on this matter over the past four years?

How do I emboss a small monochrome logo (PNG) onto a surface using Inventor?

Thanks

[admaiora]

Hi Vagolus,

[mcgyvr]

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@Vagulus wrote:

  Has there been some progress on this matter over the past four years?

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Nope.. Nothing has changed as far as that is concerned.. 

Are you aware of the decal function? Not sure if you actually need the image on your product so its just like a decal applied to it or actually need to be able to machine (engrave or whatever) that into your physical model.. 

[Vagulus]

Thanks Admaiora.  That was certainly helpful in this case and a lot less complicated than some of the solutions from a couple of years back, but it is not a complete solution.

Suppose I wished to emboss a New Zealand Maori  motif (in this case a 'koru' which represents an unfurling fern frond and is a symbol of new life)

I suspect that tracing this image in Inventor might be more trouble than it is worth which takes me back to my original question, "Is there a way in Inventor to emboss or etch from an image?"

[johnsonshiue · Accepted solution]

Hi! I think you will need to use AutoCAD Raster Design. An image file is a raster data (pixel), which does not have definition to form a profile. AutoCAD Raster Design can help convert raster data to curves. After you convert it, you can copy and paste (or import) the geometry from AutoCAD to Inventor sketch.

Many thanks!

[Vagulus]

Thanks Johnson I'll chase that around.