DaveyBoy wrote:deraudrl wrote:I suppose just drawing an arc segment with a really wide brush and round endcaps is too easy
I haven't tried that but I doubt it would be of sufficient accuracy/quality. It needs to be pretty precise as it will be a proper dimensioned technical drawing for manufacture.
I suggest having a quick word with whoever will be doing the manufacturing to see what they'll find most useful. Whatever tools are used, there will be a conversion step from drawing to tool-paths in any case (even for an AutoCAD file). A very rough drawing with accurate annotations (slot widths, centres, radii, angles, etc.) may even be preferred by the machine operator - bitmaps can be tricky to turn directly into tool-paths, and the slot centrelines may be more critical than the outlines depending what tool is used (e.g. a mill matching the width and end-radius of the slots just has to follow the centreline once to complete a slot).
Don't let that stop your experiments, though - it's fascinating to see some generic "shape maker" Ruby code being created!
guyman wrote:line curve "anchors" like photoshop does
That is very close to how things are actually done in FS. Beneath the surface, all circles, arcs, rounded corners, and curves are represented as Bezier curves. GraphicsPaths even have a "getPathData" method which returns the positions of the "handles".