Tips for drawing logos in SolidWorks that actually come out clean

I did something similar last fall when a buddy wanted his food truck logo cut out of acrylic for the side of the truck. Instead of tracing splines freehand, I dropped a photo of the logo into a sketch picture and traced over it with arcs and lines where I could. Maybe 80 percent of his logo was circular arcs anyway, so it went faster than I thought it would. Where I ran into trouble was exactly what you said about constraining too early. I had the habit from mechanical work of dimensioning as I go, and I kept snapping lines to the sketch picture in weird ways. Once I deleted half the relations and just redrew the shape loose, it came togehter in an hour or two. One thing I found different in my case was the DXF export. The plasma shop that cut the acrylic wanted closed profiles with no overlapping edges, so I spent more time cleaning up tiny gaps between curve ends than I did on the actual sketching. If your letters are built from separate extrusions that overlap each other, check that before you send files out. Mine had three little slivers where two letters met that would have cut as garbage.

The thin feature check is a good call too. I caught a weird kink in the R of his truck name that looked fine on screen but showed up immediately once it had thickness.

I tried drawing a little sign for my garage door the same way but I got stuck halfway thru. Every time I bent one curve the rest of the shape went wonky and I just gave up and did it by eye. Never heard about leaving the measurements for last, that probly explains a lot. When you say it comes out smoother than the drawing apps, is that because the program smooths the bends on its own or because you go back over them a second time? Also that thin wall check sounds handy, never thought to puff a flat drawing up just to spot mistakes.

I've only ever used AutoCAD at work for floor plans, so this thread is making me wonder if I should poke at the 3D side of things. When I draw our company logo in CAD I end up with the opposite problem, everything is measured to death and it looks stiff. Question though, when you trace with splines do you just eyeball the control points first pass? I tried something like that once and my curves looked like a wobbly worm til I fiddled forever. Also curious if the file plays nice going back into AutoCAD, or does it get all chunky when it converts.

Update: gave the sketch picture trick a shot after reading that food truck story, dropped a screenshot in and traced over it with arcs where I could instead of splines. Way fewer control points to babysit and the curves came out cleaner. Still curious how the AutoCAD side handles the spline stuff, my guess is the drawing-first habit is what makes logos feel stiff.