<p>I work on communication devices for people with disabilities that prevent them from speaking.  This can be anything from a board with symbols on, to a relatively sophisticated app.  </p>

<p>Some potential users also have sight issues and have to distinguish symbols by feel (these particular users have cognitive disabilities and so braile isn't useful) .  Currently the solution is to, by hand, stick items onto the buttons. Like this: </p>

<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/cFS0d.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/cFS0d.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>

<p>This is effective, but takes a very long time.  </p>

<p>There exists open symbol libraries <a href="http://straight-street.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">like this</a>, that include nice svg images like <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/e5emeku99xxmeub/traffic%20lights.svg?dl=0" rel="nofollow noreferrer">this one</a> (not uploaded, because SO doesn't like svg, but here's the screenshot: </p>

<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/746CY.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/746CY.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>

<p>A friend converted some of these images into 3d prints like so: </p>

<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/Cv41n.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/Cv41n.jpg" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>

<p>This was amazing, and useful, but I understand quite time-intensive for him - and there are thousands of these symbols.</p>

<p>Here's what I want to know: given that SVG is a relatively simple structure and the symbols are very simple, what are the steps for writing the script that says: "Take the svg, map it to a plane, raise everything that is black by 2mm, everything that is gray by 1mm and add height for the rest of the colours according to this table" ? </p>

<p>Bonus points for something that I can reasonably get going on a set of 10000 svg files and come back to later...</p>

[{'answer_id': 5079, 'author': 'Ross', 'author_id': 7595, 'author_profile': 'https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/users/7595', 'pm_score': 2, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p>If you install inkscape, pstoedit and ghostscript version 9.21 (not the latest as pstoedit is incompatible)   you can get the file into a format that openscad can \nimport using two commands in a cmd file </p>\n\n<pre><code>"C:\\Program Files\\Inkscape\\inkscape" -E "traffic lights.eps" "traffic lights.svg"\n"C:\\Program Files\\pstoedit\\pstoedit" -dt -f dxf:-polyaslines "traffic lights.eps" "traffic lights.dxf"\n</code></pre>\n\n<p>then in openscad</p>\n\n<pre><code>linear_extrude(3) import ("traffic lights.dxf");\n</code></pre>\n\n<p>will import gives me </p>\n\n<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/3BM0c.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/3BM0c.png" alt="openscad"></a></p>\n\n<p>With a thickness of 3mm - you can see the model needs some scaling but its seems possible although - I can\'t see an option to scale based on color - </p>\n'}, {'answer_id': 5082, 'author': 'Nautis', 'author_id': 9285, 'author_profile': 'https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/users/9285', 'pm_score': 0, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p>Nothing thats works via scripting BUT is really simple and easy.</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li>register on tinkercad.com (I know register is a bummer but its a great tool)</li>\n<li>open a new design</li>\n<li>import *.svg file</li>\n<li>adjust height or size of the converted object</li>\n<li>download .stl</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p>Thats going to take a while for 1000 files but its so simple, printing the stuff will take forever, so you´ve got some time :P</p>\n\n<p>Edit: Maybe edit the topic to something like "SVG to STL conversion" which would make the thread more likely to be found.</p>\n'}]
['https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/questions/5078', 'https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com', 'https://3dprinting.stackexchange.com/users/9273/']