Hi, I am rather new at using LightBurn. I have been using corel draw for many years but my Boss laser will not play nicely with my CDR files.
Long story short I found the best way for me to bring over my CDR files is to open them in Corel Photo Paint, save them as a high resolution JPEG and open this JPEG in light burn. I then Trace Image and have had great luck with most everything converting over well.
The one issue I am still completely stuck on is the outside perimeter line still being BLACK in color.
I pre punch out by shields (shape) so this outside black line around the shield is causing it to engrave an unwanted thin line. Does anyone have a fix around of how to remove this or simply just change it to white therefore it would not etch or engrave there?
For example what I do in coreldraw with my current laser (epilog) is the outside perimiter line I turn RED and set that at zero power to not engrave. This allows me to perfectly line up my shield in the exact center.
I suggest you export the file to SVG from Corel. This will retain vector data.
The reason youâre getting the thin line is because of the trace. The reason itâs a little hard to remove because the line is touching the top of the shield making it in effect not an outline but part of the main shape.
4 suggestions:
as stated earlier, export to SVG. That will retain the shape information which will allow you to easily modify this.
use node edits tool to remove the unwanted ring
You could potentially use boolean tools to remove this
Draw the outside ring so itâs not touching the shield. This will allow you to remove the ring after tracing.
Really, though, solutions 2-4 are for a problem thatâs being unnecessarily created. Would be best if you can use SVG.
You can move that outline on one of the tool layers (T1 or T2). This wonât get output to the laser but can help you with the framing and get it all lined up with your pre-cut shields.
I could be understanding this completely wrong but this is a post I made the other week when bringing it over as an SVG. Was loosing parts of the design that I needed to keep (layers around the 2 in the center, and the exterior layers around the perimeter)
Thanks Marcus, I am rather new to this still. I believe i moved the exterior portion to the T1 tool layer like you were speaking of. Would this cause the entire exterior past the white perimeter to be lasered away as well since it is black? Or since the (orange) tool layer is over that would it cause that area not to be etched away?
Ok, Iâll have a go at explaining how I did it before I drag myself off to bed!!
I selected the outermost line and offset it inwards by 0.0762mm (I arrived at this figure after a bit of trial and error and some educated guesswork). I then moved this outer line to the T1 layer. I then selected the object that had been created by the offset command and performed a boolean subtract of the outer white area. I then repeated it with the other white area. I did these booleans so that I could remove some small extraneous areas created by the outlines overlapping each other in places. Itâs difficult to explain but if you go through the procedure yourself youâll see what I mean. Actually, now I think about it I only needed to boolean the outer white area, I didnât need to do it to the inner one as well.
As @berainlb said: it would be far better if you could manage to get it into LB directly as a vector rather than converting to raster then back to vector. Would you be willing to post the CDR file (Iâm on 2018 so it would need to be this version or earlier for me to be able to read it)?
Thank you for all the help with this. That took alot of your time and work to discover so thank you. Would be a long process to fine tune all the thousands of CDR files I have to get them to work in LightBurn with my Boss laser
Of course I can upload the CDR file, I will save it in 2018 and 2017 to make sure one of them will open. I will âconvert to curvesâ on one of the two files incase it gives you trouble with the font I used.
Seems to not let me upload a CDR file here. Can you message me with your email and i can send it there?
Just to give further info, I did download the Corel to LightBurn Macro but was still running into issues as the previous mentioned posting I listed showed with the way I work in layers and with text and shape outlines. The outlines and overlapping seems to be what is giving me the largest issues with converting these files over. Ive been in contact with Boss Laser tech support, LightBurn tech support and Corel tech support all with no real solution.
Yes, unfortunately the forum is very restricted with the file types it will allow you to upload. The way around it is to append â.txtâ to the file name. I can then just remove that when I download it. If youâd rather email it Iâll drop you a message with my email address.
Hmm. I know very little about this. Are you able to explain how to add the txt? I tried renaming it but im guessing its deeper then just doing that? If you wouldnât mind sending me a message that would be great
Would you mind uploading the file here when you have time sir? Might help others to be able to play with it as well since I was having issues uploading it with the txt
Hi Berainlb how are you? If you would like me to send you the CDR or SVG file as well please let me know. I could very well be doing something completely wrong
No problem, see attached. You can either replace the .CDR with .TXT or what I prefer to do is append .TXT after the .CDR extension. It obviously doesnât change the file in any way but it tricks the forum software into accepting it.
FYI: If by any chance youâre not seeing the .CDR extension on your system it might be because of the immensely stupid setting on default Windows systems where it hides extensions of known file types. This has got to be the dumbest setting ever! I always turn that off immediately on any new system as it can cause all sorts of unnecessary grief.
Iâll take a look at the files as soon as I get a moment.
I donât have CorelDraw and havenât used it in years so hard to advise you. A few major things to look out for though:
Make sure that nothing is getting lost between CDR->SVG conversion. Try reimporting SVG back into Draw. From what I recall not all elements from CDR are transferred in Corelâs conversion.
Certain elements in SVG are not imported into LightBurn. From memory this includes bitmap masks. Or itâs possible that the alignment is lost. Text has recently been added into LightBurn import but havenât used it extensively. You may want to convert to path before export to SVG to avoid any potential issues.
I did take a look at one of the SVG files that you posted in the other Topic. From what I could see it was being imported into multiple layers which implies there were multiple colors in the original file. However, your original design looked like it was meant to be black and white. Iâd suggest reviewing the colors in the original CDR file to make sure colors are correct. Note that the way LightBurn interprets interaction of filled shapes is inferred. If objects of the same layer overlap this causes the overlap to go into negative space. So color matters in this case. This is in contrast to CorelDraw where you can have multiple colors in a single combined shape.
Ok, Iâve been working on your file and added some instructions and hints/tips to help you make the artwork ready for LB. Iâve also attached an end result where Iâve followed the instructions. This will hopefully show what youâre aiming for and is able to be imported into LB using the macro. After importing into LB there are a few things you need to do but thatâs explained in the file containing the instructions. Hopefully it will all make sense! I had to save the annotated version as 2018 as I got a warning that some features Iâd used werenât supported in version 16. BTW, donât forget to remove the .TXT extension
Hi Berainlb, I tried opening the same SVG file back into CorelDraw and it opens and looks perfectly. When i open it in LightBurn it is still having issues.
I also checked the colors to ensure there were only two colors being used in the entire image, Black and white no other variations (thank you for bringing that up i never thought to check that)
I did also ensure that the entire image was all on one layer incase that was giving me issues as well. The text itself it layered on top of itself to give that double effect on the 2 but all items are in the same layer in corel draw.
When I was working on your CDR file I noticed you were actually using three different âblacksâ. One was RGB, one was from the LightBurn palette and one was CMYK. Although theyâre all black LB interprets these differently. The RGB and LB palette blacks get put on layer C00 but the CMYK black gets put on layer C27. I think I made a note regarding colours in the annotated version I posted above.
Hope this helps.
EDIT: btw, LightBurn ignores Corel layers, it determines which layer to put things on depending on their colour.
