Boolean Union, Difference, Intersection. Problem with me I think

Back to this old chestnut please, I thought that I had this cracked until this morning, I have been doing these for a while now without any problems, this morning i bought in a vector (SVG) of a Great Dane and I want it to be incorporated into the snowline under it.

What I have been doing in the past is just altering the snow a little to cover the paws and then use one of the boolean tools and it allows me to have the dog and the inner ring as one item so the dog gets cut out perfectly as part of the decoration. I add names in the space below etc.

I dont understand whats changed, the two tools below Weld will not light up ever and its normally one of these 3 that solves the problem.

Today it wont work and I dont understand why. Doesnt seem to matter what I select or in what order. I can not switch on the bottom 2 tools of the 3 Boolean operations.

Some screenshots attached together with my lightburn file please for taking a look at.

Many thanks.

Neil.

Latest version Lightburn, Mac OSX Mojave latest update, Macbook Pro, K40 laser.



Christmas Tree Ring Yolanda .lbrn (142.3 KB)

You’re going to do one of two things - Union the dog with the entire ornament, OR subtract the dog from just the center part of the ornament:

On the left, I have the whole ornament, grouped together as a single thing. On the right, I have just the middle portion. When filled, it’s a little easier to see why things work the way they do. When doing a union, you’re keeping the overlap of all filled areas. Weld does this too, but it doesn’t know which things you want it to “keep together”.

Booleans only work on two things at once, so it’s very explicit about what is being merged. So, on the left side, if you union all the filled bits together, or you subtract (difference) the dog from the shape on the right, you get these:

image

Thanks for that, I thought I understood this feature as I have been using it for a few weeks now without problems and have produced a lot of decorations but what i don’t understand is why it doesnt work with my file which I attached to my post.

I have the two objects but whatever I do lightburn will only show the weld option and not the boolean functions. They remain greyed out.

If I remove the dog from the centre of the drawing and cast it to one side, draw a square for example within the ring and select the ring and the square the boolean options are available to me and work as I expect but with the dog image they are not and that is what i dont understand.

Is there a problem with the dog image that I am not seeing or what else could it be. I simply dont understand why when i draw a square or a circle boolean is available but when i import the dog image and go to the boolean options apart from weld they are greyed out.

To me it is as if there is an issue with the dog image but I haven’t got a clue what? I really thought I had got this sorted in my mind but it seems not and I am sorry if I am not getting this.

I apologise for coming back but I do not know where I am going wrong.

Thank you.

Boolean only works with properly closed shapes, so if you aren’t getting the boolean options, but you only have two items selected, then something in there isn’t closed.

OK, i was thinking along those lines so back to the drawing board on that dog vector…

thanks for the help at least i wasnt going crazy.

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