I have an SVG file created in Inkscape that I just tried to import into LB. After importing it is clear I am doing something wrong either designing in Inkscape for LB, or failing to alter the SVG after importing. It appears that anything that was not converted to a path remains a stroke only and LB will only assign it to a Line/Cut. Anything that was converted to a path appears to be fillable. My other problem is that all the content is stuck on 1 layer. No individual components can be selected. No matter where I click on the image it will select everything. Can the image layers be separated after importing or is that something I have to do in Inkscape before importing to LB?
When designing in Inkscape I get the image to look exactly how I would like it. This includes overlapping lines which are masked by other objects in the image. Imagine designing a window shape in Inkscape and individually drawing the window grill in with the Bezier pen. Each line of the grill will start and end at different lengths, but in Inkscape it appears normal so long as the colors match. After importing to LB all the lines show in their actual length and overlaps are easily spotted.
Is there a process to prepare an image in Inkscape so that the image, as I see it, will import into LB without everything going wonky? Hopefully I will be able to salvage the file I spent a long time working on and not have to start from scratch again.
I have converted some of the items to a path in Inkscape. Is the correct way to do this just to convert everything in Inkscape to a path and then use combine or union to link everything together? Then when I import LB will treat it all as a fill and engrave the shape? That is what I am thinking but please let me know if I am wrong.
Well I followed my line of thinking and it worked out just fine. I converted all strokes to paths first, then used the union function to make the whole image one cohesive path. Importing that into LB did the trick and now there is no overlapping or funky lines. Thanks for leading me in the right direction!
Sounds like you got it. For some background on why designing for print and designing for lasering is different can be seen in what you were seeing.
When designing for print you can essentially follow a “painter’s algorithm” where you can just keep stacking graphics on top of one another with only the top-most graphic being relevant to what you see.
This is different than lasering where you’re really only dealing with lines for everything. Even fill layers are even lines… just many lines very tightly spaced. Because of this you see through all other stacked objects and see the lines that make up those adjacent shapes.
As you discovered, the solution is to union the adjacent objects so that overlapping shapes are not seen through each other.
LightBurn actually by default will auto-weld text for this very reason.
