Combine images with boolian union of two shapes

LightBurn Software Questions
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test_backup.lbrn2 (297.1 KB)

I uploaded a picture and want to laser our names. The left one is ok, but the right one doesn’t seem to succeed. I wanted to combine the name with the edge via Boolean union of two shapes. When I use 2 squares I can combine them but when I want to combine my image I cannot select it. What am I doing wrong?

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Select the line under the name and go to edit and close path and try again.

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@Mitch144 If you just want the right one to look like the left:

  1. select every component of the name including the enclosed shapes like in the letter ‘e’ and ‘a’. Don’t forget the dot in the ‘i’. Group these together.
  2. Make sure you have nothing currently selected. Then first select the inner semi-circle with the edge that the name is supposed to connect to. While keeping that selected add the grouped name to the selection (shift-left-click).
  3. Tools → Boolean Difference. [EDIT] - if boolean operations are not available, select only semi-circle portion and then Edit->Close Path. Then retry steps 2 and 3.
  4. You should now have the equivalent to the left

If this is different than why you wanted let us know.

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Did this work for you? I had to close the path before the boolean would activate.

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Yes. From what I saw that inner semi-circle was a closed path. I checked visually by changing the layer to fill and it showed up fully shaded. You may need to move that shape away from the others so that the interaction between shapes doesn’t change the interpretation of the shape. (FYI, inner shapes are treated as cut-outs of outer shapes)

I didn’t realize you were suggesting the same fix because I was seeing something different. But this is curious.

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I tried everything. It showed filled for me too. Still boolean wouldn’t work till closed path. Weird how it worked for you and not me.

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yesssssss i did it!!!

thx for the help friends !!

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@Mitch144 Glad you got it. Now it sounds like we have a different mystery here. Did you create this shape in LightBurn or you imported it from another source? If the latter, what format was it in?

@micrololin Wow. So based on what you were seeing I went back to try this a third time to see what might be different and sure enough, I can recreate what you’re seeing. I’ve done this reliably twice doing it the most direct way as I listed.

However, if I play around with things for a while I can sometimes get the boolean operations to show up without ever using “close path”. I can’t find a way to do this reliably though so this has me flustered. I’ll need to keep exploring.

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Final update. I now can’t even get the boolean operations to show up again without close path after several minutes of playing with this. The shape does show up when using Edit->Select open shapes set to fill even though it shows shaded so it does think it’s open at least.

I’m going to punt for now and chock it up to a glitch or user error on my part. I’ll update the earlier entry to reflect this in case someone else tries this out.

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I found the christmas ball shape on thingiverse.

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