Tracing photos and drawings
Place ports by clicking on a straight-on photo or a datasheet drawing of a face. Photos are processed on your devices and never stored by Rack Maker.
How tracing works
In Faces and ports, each face can have one image under it: a photo of that face, or a page of a datasheet with a drawing of it. Once the image is lined up with the face, you place ports, zones, LEDs and buttons by clicking on it, and their positions come out in millimetres.
A device can keep several photos, and the modeler can find the ports on a traced one for you: see Photos and port detection.
Your photos stay on your devices
Photos are processed in your browser and kept in this browser. Rack Maker never stores them, and they are never part of a draft, a published entry or its model file. What is kept with the device is numbers only: sizes and positions in millimetres.
Tracing a photo
Take the photo
Photograph the face as straight on as you can, the whole face in view. A ruler or calipers in the picture helps you check your numbers.
Add it to the face
Open the face's tab, then Photo… and pick the file.
Click the four corners
The modeler asks for each corner in turn: bottom-left, bottom-right, top-right, then top-left, as seen from outside. The photo is then straightened and scaled to the face's size, which corrects for a photo taken at a slight angle.
Place ports on it
The straightened photo now shows under the face. Pick a tool and click on each opening. Drag a corner on the photo to adjust it, or use Click the corners again to start over.
Set the body's size in Shape and size first: the photo is scaled to the face you measured, so the face's width and height must be right.
Tracing a datasheet drawing
A technical drawing in a datasheet is already straight on, so instead of corners it needs a scale and a position.
- Open the datasheet in Name with Read a PDF… (see Datasheets).
- In Faces and ports, pick the page with the drawing and choose Use the page.
- Scale: click both ends of a labelled dimension, type its length in mm, and choose Set scale.
- Place the face: click the bottom-left corner of the face on the drawing.
Drag the outline to move the face on the drawing if it needs a nudge.
Showing and removing the image
- show: a slider for how strongly the image shows under the face.
- Hide the image and Adjust: tuck the image away once it is lined up, and bring it back.
- The bin button removes the face's image.
Faces you can't trace
A photo can't be traced on the round side of a cylinder: measure positions along the surface instead. A face that carries nothing on its shape, such as the walls of an extruded bracket, says so. See Shapes and parts.
What is sent, and what isn't
| What | Where it goes |
|---|---|
| The photo | Processed in your browser, downscaled to at most 2,000 px on its long side, and kept in this browser's storage. Never stored by Rack Maker. |
| A datasheet page used as a drawing | Rendered in your browser, kept like a photo. |
| The corners, the scale and the image's size in pixels | Kept in this browser with the photo. |
| Your measurements (sizes, port positions, finishes) | Saved to your account as your draft, and published with the entry. |
| The model file | Built from your measurements only. No photo textures. |
Between your own browsers
With live sync, a traced face can follow you to your other signed-in browsers:
- The corners and the image's size go to your other browsers that have the draft open, so they line up the same way.
- A browser that doesn't have the photo asks your others for it. The photo then passes through Rack Maker's server in transit only, while both browsers are open, and is never stored on the way. The receiving browser keeps its own copy.
- If no other browser with the photo is open, it doesn't arrive: open the draft on the device that has it, add it again, or remove it.
Under a traced face the modeler shows Waiting for your other device, Receiving the photo from your other device… or Received from your other device. See Live sync.
With your AI agent
An agent reads your photos on your computer and sends only numbers: the photo's size in pixels and the face's four corners on it, or a drawing's scale and origin. The server keeps those numbers with the agent's working copy, to turn points on the photo into millimetres. It has no way to receive a photo. See How an agent measures.
Taking colours from a photo
In Finishes, a traced photo can be clicked to take the colour under the pointer for the body, a zone or the feet. The colour is read in your browser; the photo goes nowhere.