I need help… I am a user of Vetric’s VCarve Pro and it is more difficult to transition into Lightburn mode than I thought it would be.
In VCarve I you set up the material and the x/y 0. During design phase I make in my top right corner.
Then You have your material bounds. Your design is within those bounds.
I cannot figure this out in LB. Is there a way to set material dimensions? That way I know where to place my art? I did find Carl Fisher’s Machine and Job Origin video. It has helped a lot, but I miss not having a “materials settings” area.
EDIT - Also, is there a way to measure my art/drawing in LB? The phone case example in Carl’s video is a good example. How do I determine the size of my object?
I suspect I am over thinking this, but I am still confused and my production is zero at this point. Frustration levels are high…
Thanks in advance for any advice, it is appreciated.
Not sure I am getting all this but let me try to offer you something.
You are asking to define the “size of material” you are using. LightBurn does now know what material you are using nor the size of it. This is not required for LightBurn to work and produce your desired outcome successfully.
In LightBurn you are presented with a drawing area known as the workspace. When properly configured, this workspace will be the size of your laser system bed. This is where you place/draw artwork. Artwork placed in the workspace is assigned to a layer which is where you define the cut parameters. You can have many layers, allowing you to produce complex projects with different cut settings in a single job.
So, if your workspace is say 600mm X 900mm, this is what you will be presented when looking at your properly configured LightBurn screen. Now, let’s assume you have some material you want to use and it measures 100mm X 100mm. Using the tools included, you can draw a 100mm X 100mm rectangle to define the size of the material visually in the workspace and use that as an alignment guide for correctly placing your artwork. You can set the layer used for this “rectangle alignment guide” to not output when you run the job. LightBurn has several alignment tools built in to help you get things where you want then on the workspace.
LightBurn also provides the ability for you to define several ways to control the location of output on the laser bed (absolute coordinates, user origin, and current position) providing tremendous flexibility in job planning and production.
I think you are thinking about this from the CNC side because of your VCarve experience. Laser control is different and it will just take a bit of time to learn the differences.
Here is the complete list of our official videos, definitely worth some review.
If you want to measure something, use the ‘Pen/Line’ tool as a ruler and read the length in the status bar at the bottom. Click on the first point to measure from, then hover over the 2nd point, and you’ll see the length display update in the status bar. Press ESC to (or right-click) to stop drawing the line, and no changes are made to your design.
Thank you Rick. The information you provided has helped me get a grip on how to change my thinking from VCarve to Lightburn, It just did not dawn on me to create a boundary for which to place me work.
I am still having some screen navigation issues (like during node editing - how to zoom in really close and then reset to “normal” view), but I am sure they are easy enough to figure out.
I have watched all but the second Cutting Setting videos.
Again, thank you!
zeighty -
Slowly but surely, things will start to feel so normal, you will forget the awkwardness of transistioning to a new tool. This is a helpful reminder for navigation and usage Hotkeys: https://github.com/LightBurnSoftware/Documentation/blob/master/HotKeys.md#hot-keys-and-gestures
Ctrl+Shift+A is “Frame Selection”, but if there isn’t a current selection, it acts as “Frame all” to frame everything in the current project. The mouse wheel is used to quickly zoom in and out as well, and the middle-mouse button is held to pan around. The left-most magnifying glass on the main toolbar will frame the workspace, which works well as a sort of “view reset”.
It shouldn’t take long to get used to - I have Vectric software too (VCarve, then upgraded to Aspire), and I liked their UI navigation, so some of it will feel familiar.
Thanks for all the advice. It is very much appreciated.
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