This is kind of close to what i am wondering if we can do within Lightburn.
I am cutting out a selection of pieces which are different shapes and sizes. Because i want to get everything as cosy as possible (the material i am cutting is hundreds of dollars per M, so every mm counts)
I want to set my spacing as tight as possible. One function i use within AI is to select all the pieces, then left click the master piece and then you can set the distribution/alignment around that master piece. Does the same function exist within LB ?
To lead onto this, is there was a way to even set a master piece in an alignment? I am cutting jiggs/templates and say i want a word to centre to a circle. If i select both and do an alignment they generally both move to each others centre. Can one be locked or become the master that the other pieces move towards?
In general when using align functions, the last selected item is the anchor. With distribute functions, it’s the two outer-most objects. There isn’t currently a function that lets you choose the spacing between a bunch of individual things, so you’d need to fuss with it a bit.
For what you’re trying to do, I’d suggest exporting to an SVG file and trying SVGNest on the shapes, then importing the result.
Cool. Thanks for the reply. I understand better how it works now so i’ll go off that. Cheers for the suggestion too ill definitely look into it.
Does lightburn offer any sort of Nesting feature? (couldnt remember name, thanks for reminding me!)
Without trying to tell you guys what to do, cause I’m already grateful, it could be a great feature to implement cause it saves massive amounts of time, rather than referencing objects already there. Plus its a good hack method of manually nesting stuff. Just an idea.
It’s planned - both a manual distribute function and proper nesting - but it’ll take a bit. Things have been hectic lately just trying to keep up with support.
