geometry cleanup and chaining question

Hi Guys

Please forgive me if this isnt the proper place to pose this question but I was told that the enroute software can handle the problem I have.

I have been machining parts for quite a while now using basic cad cam and solidworks. I was tasked with making an engraving the other day for my sons school project and ran into some trouble based on the shear volume of geometry and my cam packages lack of features to deal with it.

Hell, I dont even know enough about engraving programs to even know how to properly ask the question. In my software i would need to chain together all of the lines I want the tool to follow and for the kinds of parts I normally make this is easy. But the engrave file I found online was a different story becasue of the number of chains required. I have uploaded the files I have and you can see the DXF here

Can someone give me a brief overview in the proper lingo on how you would treat a file like this and could you point me to a low cost program that is capable of dealing with files like this for engraving / laser etching / cutting.

I can count on 2 hands the number of times I have run into this kind of problem in the past 15 years but it would be nice for adding company logos etc to parts I normally machine.

If anyone is interested, you can see some of the work I normally do here.

Thanks for your time

Bill Griffin

Hi, take a look at Aspire, for the money great. I use enroute and is a terrific program but for just engraving might be a bit expensive. Most new cam programs take care of all the chaining, sounds like you might be using an older version of mastercam. Just my 2cents.