Does any one use a Wacom Cintiq, or any other art tablet, to design in Lightburn? Thoughts on its effectiveness or comparison to making digital art with the same ease as physical art? Thanks for your opinions and insights!
Using a tablet is just like using any of the image creating programs in your computer. If you can export in one of the usual image formats, like BMP, JPG, or PNG, you should have no problem. Please remember Lightburn, and your laser, is only black and white (burn or no burn). If you design in B&W, using images in Lightburn will be much easier.
Thanks, @MikeyH ! I’m more looking at it from the functionality point of view. Nearly a decade of experience with AutoCAD, SolidWorks, etc. has made my few years in LB make sense from a technical perspective. However, as a lefty I’m not super fast at the execution when it comes to getting shapes manipulated to burn. My line of thinking was that an art tablet or interactive display, like Cintiq, would allow for a nice blend of how I naturally want to manipulate a design and edit with my dominant hand while still being able to select hotkeys or type more comfortably with my right.
As of this morning, Wacom Support has shed a little more light that’s also been helpful. The interactive devices will function with LB, but since LB isn’t pressure sensitive in relation to how lines and shapes are created, the screen and tablet devices function as a mouse instead of a brush. The stylus/pens can still drag and select selection boxes, operate the menus, and that sort of thing. In theory they would also make selecting nodes, reshaping objects and lines, and rearranging shapes a bit easier. Plus I’d also have the interactive device to make the digital art that all the Laser or Vinyl files would be based off of without having to change platforms.
I have used Solidworks for a long time in the past on CNC, does it control a laser engraver
@Ganitta28 - Not that I’m aware of. It may be just me, but the prior experience helps my thought process shoot the gap between the imagination of art and the technicality of mathematical shapes based on planes. Offsets, designated origin points, kerfs, and tolerances were all ingrained concepts for me coming into LB, though I completely empathize with those who aren’t expecting that side of design coming into it.
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I hope you are using laser approved vinyl. Anything else is seriously dangerous to burn.
Congratulations and welcome.
You can try https://www.spacedesk.net/
I believe it will fulfill your expectations.
I have a Cintiq but don’t really see any advantage to using it the way I use Lightburn. The Cintiq really shines in it’s ability to create organic shapes and pressure sensitivity. It is a great tool for digital artists. Now a tool that I find way more useful for Lightburn is a Tourbox. The Tourbox has a number of programable buttons that can be mapped to any of Lightburn shortcuts. The Tourbox is so ergonomic that you never have to look at it. You can instantly execute commands with the touch of a button that once required you to go through dropdown menus, requestors, or memorizing keyboard shortcuts.
hi same for me,Dmt10,solidworks was just tools of creativity mixing machining, techniques, precision and imagination! goodengraving
Oh, heck no. Not on the laser. Sorry, I definitely left that open for interpretation. I use Inkscape/InkCut and send those files to a vinyl cutter.
I agree, a drawing tablet does not really help much, since you need to create lines more like nodes etc. and not like a pixel image where you can draw anywhere. I don’t see much use here (at least for my use cases).
Regarding keyboard shortcuts, a LB keyboard can be created with a few simple parts for $10 or less:
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