Can you assist me in design for this project?

[nelsonmay]

I am kind of all thumbs on LB. I just bought the software last week. I am part of a maker space and we have a Thunder laser. I am trying to design what I am going to show in my pics. This is a sidewalk for a model layout. The largest L pieces need to be 18" long by about 4 1/2 inches high. This is in O scale which is about 1/48. In the rendering I painstakingly created in Photoshop, the cobblestones are not to scale. I also used a square .jpg of cobblestones, copied and pasted it.

In PS, I had to draw lines, copy and paste my cobblestone, and draw the large cobblestones around the perimeter of the sidewalk. I also copied and pasted the sewer covers and grates. I assume I have to create an “L” by combining 2 polygons and doing the fill from there. If I create my larger perimeter cobblestones, can I draw a rectangle, draw little lines, or just make them from multiple polygons, (rectangles)? Can I also drop in the sewer cover etc? Will having a vector image of cobblestones work as I can drag it to size within the “L”?

Then, can all these layers be combined into one layer where I can etch the cobblestones, etc, and created a new layer around the “L” to have it cut out?

Or should I try to create this in illustrator, which I know nothing about, export as an .svg and import into LB?

Lot of stuff, but I have to start somewhere and please remember that I can learn

stuff in time, but I am not a trained CAD or graphic artist, so a lot of these concepts are foreign to me.

Please see my spot plan (euro sidewalk spot plan.jpg) with measurements, and my low end rendering (euro final sidewalk.jpg) and I will include a layout pic (European cafe raceway.jpeg) to give an idea of what I am doing. The older sidewalks are not European, so I am tearing them out.

[berainlb (PY)]

I suggest 2 options:

1. You can take a bitmap of your cobblestones and mask a LightBurn shape such as the ‘L’ shape around it. You can access this from Tools->Apply mask to image. It would be easiest to do this if you just have a large to-scale rectangular texture bitmap that you can apply any mask to. No need to pre-shape to an L.
2. Create a vector version of your cobblestone that’s a repeating pattern that you can expand arbitrarily large. You could then cut the pattern to fit the shape that you like.

[nelsonmay]

I was able to find the grid function and draw my sidewalk. I also drew an “L” shape via intersecting 2 polygons. I am trying to apply a mask to my image in the shape of the “L” polygon. The function is greyed out in the tools. I don’t mind scoring the whole thing and them cutting it out, but it would save time and material to cut the “L” shape. Advice? It may be hard to see, but if you blow up the attached jpeg, there is a blue polygon surrounding the “block grid”.

[berainlb (PY)]

1. If not already, group all the shapes of the sidewalk
2. select both the grouped sidewalk shapes and the ‘L’
3. Tools->Boolean Intersection

That should leave you with just an ‘L’ shaped set of sidewalk.

[nelsonmay]

It is not letting me do it. I selected all the objects. Everything is dotted lines. The 1. Tools->Boolean Intersection is still greyed out. I don’t even have the option in the left sidebar.

[berainlb (PY)]

2 conditions are required for boolean operations to be available:

1. You’re only dealing with closed path shapes. Meaning the start and end of all line segments are joined and in a loop. Check for open shapes by Edit->Select open shapes. If any get selected there those shapes are not closed.
2. You’re only working with 2 objects. Grouped closed shapes will be treated as a single object. So in this case, the grouped sidewalk texture is one, the second is the L shape.

It’s likely that one of these conditions is not satisfied. If you can’t sort out which upload the .lbrn file here for review.