Vectric Tutorial - Allowance Offset (Excellent for Puzzles) 

Hey, Garrett! Believe it or not, I have been all afternoon trying to make a puzzle for ELIJAH. I used a font that didn't have square corners, because I knew that I would run into problems there. However, when I made the letters in the pocket larger, the little triangle inside the 'A' would be too big for my cutout 'A'. So, I finally said to myself, I said "Self, you know that Garrett probably has a video for that". And, sure enough, here it is. Thanks, Buddy. once again you have come through for me. Happy CNCing, Stan

Nice info. I do quite a lot of work making parts fit together and find it easiest to take my 1/4 EM and create a new one from it with a diameter of .245, and save it as 1/4 offset bit. Then when I run any paths it automatically makes the pocket .005 bigger and the profile cut .005 smaller.

Thank you Garrett! This will definitely help me!!!!!

I've used that technique many times when building molds where pieces have to fit together, creating inlays or repair patches. Sometimes I dog ear the corners of a pocket to accommodate the square corners of the inlay. Yes, we can fit squares into rounds.

Can you use the inlay option in vectric to the same thing??? Thanks for everything you do!!!! Chris.

This is was very very very important and informative!!! Thank you!!! Just made my first sign and tried this before i saw this video and i did the pocket without the allowance and the letter didn’t fir so now im just gonna go ahead and cut another back board so the letter can fit. 😅

Garrett, apologies for the question but why not use the inlay toolpath.

Try the "Toggle toolpath 2D drawing style" button to double check that the allowance offset goes in the direction you want. (I'm always forgetting if it should be + or -)

Try " Create Vectors" third row, 4th icon to convert text to vectors

Or right click on the text and choose "Convert to curves"

As a beginner, learn the basics, and go slow. Speed will come natural as you gain experience.

All you needed to do is "Right click - Convert to curves" to convert it to a vector...

Or simply use the "Inlay" toolpath option.