Have just downloaded Lightburn, and I have a working blender model that I have been using for 3D printing (after exporting to STL). I’d like to use that model to create both the cutting and engraving instructions for Lightburn. One path for that is to create SVG, but how do I distinguish in SVG between cutting instructions and pattern instructions? It seems to be the case that any line is a cut, rather than using greyscale information to determine laser intensity.
Any advice?
In case its useful, I can produce GCode files with the Cura slicer, but they use marlin GCode with an extrusion instruction (since they are designed for FDM printing rather than cutting and engraving).
There’s really no differentiation in LightBurn. In basic terms, you have 3 operation types in LightBurn: line, fill, image. Line will follow the SVG lines as they are laid out. Fill will take a closed shape and then render lines that approximate the filled version of the shape based on the settings you’ve provided like line interval. Image takes a raster image and converts the raster data to lines based on the image settings you’ve provided including line interval, dithering type, etc.
So depending on the nature of the model different strategies would apply. If you have a simple 2-tone model of filled vs unfilled areas then likely easiest to send all shapes to LightBurn and specify what is meant to be filled vs not.
If this isn’t making sense then upload a screenshot of the model with any necessary description for how you’d like it to be burned.
So I think the easiest way for you to do this is to export to SVG, and then in LightBurn, assign different layers to the various lines you see. I can see this being tedious if the drawing is complex, but to “hide” the lines you don’t want, you can assign them to a layer on which you disable the output.
Or, create a high resolution orthographic render in Blender instead of a perspective one, and trace that within LightBurn?
Can also produce CSG files, so I was able to produce an SVG using OpenSCAD, and then import that.
But it took me forever to figure out that the colors on the bottom of the light burn screen corresponded to layers… really counterintuitive, at least for my intuition.
Anyway, thanks for the replies, I am up and running (even though I have to do a bit more editing of the imported SVG than I would like).
Something along this line may prove useful. There are several similar topics you can turn up relating to importing an SVG with colors preassigned that correlate and automatically assign to existing LB layers.
Success seems a bit spotty but maybe worth the effort if you plan to do a lot of this workflow.