Tool Tracer

Why

Shadow boards without the tedium

Tracing a wrench by hand, or fiddling with calipers and CAD sketches, is slow — and it's the same slow process for every single tool in the drawer. Tool Tracer turns that into a photo: point, shoot, done. It's built for makers laying out foam tool organizers, pegboard shadow boards, or plywood trays on a CNC or laser cutter.

How it works

Five steps, all in the browser

1. 1

   Pick your reference sheet

   Letter, A4, or a custom size — whatever you're photographing the tool on. This is what the traced outline gets scaled against, so measure it accurately if you're using a custom sheet or board.

2. 2

   Lay the tool down and shoot

   Flat on the sheet with clear space around it, then use the camera or pick an existing photo. Even, non-glary lighting gives the cleanest trace — see the lighting note below.

3. 3

   Confirm the sheet corners

   Detected automatically; drag any handle that's not sitting exactly on an edge, then confirm to perspective-correct the photo to true scale.

4. 4

   Fine-tune the outline

   The tool's silhouette traces automatically. Adjust threshold and fit if needed, click a shape to include or exclude it, and set an offset for cutting clearance. Shiny, dark, or low-contrast tools can use the ML-assisted "tap to select" trace instead.

5. 5

   Export

   Optionally auto-label each shape (reads a stamped size marking via OCR, falls back to a guessed category), then save as DXF or SVG — labels included as native text — ready to import into your CAM software.

Tip

Even lighting makes or breaks the trace

Corner detection and silhouette tracing both work off contrast, so a single harsh overhead light casting a hard shadow across the paper is the most common cause of a messy outline. A cheap flat LED light pad underneath the sheet evens that out in seconds — these are the two I use, sized for Letter/A4 and for bigger tools respectively.

Once you've got a clean outline, here's foam sized to cut it into — two-tone (contrast top/bottom) so a cut-out tool silhouette is obvious at a glance.

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