Iâm looking in LB. It works fine there. They simply show up as objects on the same layer as the background diamond.
You are highlighting the bug Iâm pointing out. Grouping or not shouldnât change whether or not it is burned the same way it shows in the editor.
When you have overlapping vectors in the same layer you have to tell the software what to do with them.
Itâs not a bug, itâs how the software works. If you rasterize the image Lightburn will engrave it extactly as pictured but vectors get treated as tool paths.
Thereâs literally no way to tell the software what to do with them. The editor / UI only interprets them one way, by âinterference / knock outâ. The problem is that the burn routine doesnât interpret them in the same way. Instead, based on interactions between obscure settings that seemingly (to a normal user) have nothing to do with overlap / interference, it decides how to interpret the overlap. Literally a 1000th of a millimeter difference radically changes what the burn routine does with an overlap. And, worse, thereâs ZERO indication in the UI that this is happening.
Without looking ahead, attempt to predict how this shape will burn: There are no groups, just 5 squares, 4 smaller squares (15mm) overlapping a larger square (40mm) all on the same layer.
Hereâs the âfillâ view in the UI:
And hereâs the âlineâ view:
Iâll give you a few minutes to respond with your guess on how it burns âŚ
I can make it engrave however you want.
You are accusing the software of being broken because it works exactly the way it is supposed to work. Learn how to use it correctly.
The centre example has all of the shapes aligned along their outer lines and produces a cross without a border. The only thing I did to change the examples on the left & right was to change the size of the larger square by 25 microns.The only reason the top and bottom lines on the figure on the left didnât render was because the line interval was greater than the thickness of the line. The centre figure didnât render horizontal lines for the same reason and aligning the on top of each other also stops the laser from firing and rendering the vertical lines.
When you work with vectors in Lightburn you are not working with an image, you are working with 2 dimensional tool paths. The lines of a fill arenât really lines,they are boundries or starting & stop points.
Cheers,
Rob
That came off as a bit rude,but it wasnât ment to be.
my point is this, working with vectors in lightburn isnât like working with vectors in any other software, at least that I know of.When you draw a square you arenât really drawing a square, you are creating a set of line segments. The distance between those lines are determined by the line interval setting.
The software just displays it as a square and if you draw another square in the same layer and that square partially overlaps the other, the overlapped area will appear transparent if you have the layer set to fill & the view is set to filled. It has to be that way because how else do you show them a seperate shapes? If you weld both shapes then they merge into a single solid color indicating they are one single shape, thus one set of parrallel lines.
Once you stop âdrawing or loading picturesâ in Lightburn and start creating 2D tool paths it all starts making sense.
Cheers,
Rob
Again, you are missing the point. The point is that the UI does overlap one way and the rendering engine used to send jobs to the laser does it differently. And, worse, it does so based on unobvious interactions between âinvisibleâ things like grouping and obscure fill settings in the layer panel.
They need to behave in the same way so itâs predictable for the user. Itâs supposed to be a WYSIWYG editor after all.
BTW, it doesnât look like any of your examples. It actually renders like this:
Top left and bottom right 15mm squares are 0.001 mm outside the larger square. Completely invisible in the UI, but drastically different output. Thatâs the problem.
Thatâs what the preview is for.
The preview renders the image exactly the way it will burn.
If it was rendered correctly in the editor why would you even need a preview?
Thatâs why I said you need to learn to use the software just like I & everyone else had to.
one example is your 2 circles. I didnât open the file but I assume one was set to fill all shapes at once and one was set to fill shapes individually. That is what the settings are for. One treats every shape as an âindividual shapeâ and burns them one at a time. If they overlap then the overlapped area get burned again. When you set it to fill all at once that is what it does. It sees the first line and it fires the laser. When it sees the next line it stops firing the laser until it gets to the next line, like the image on the left:
Notice that both examples fail to engrave the square on the bottom left? Thatâs because lightburn will always see a vector inside another vector as a hole. How do you show all of this inside the editor? You create a preview.
I guess Lightburn could create a real-time updated preview window but it isnât needed if you know how to use the software. And when all else fails; If you want to engrave a vector and you can not get it to engrave as pictured in the editor you can convert it to a bitmap and engrave it as a raster.
Iâm sure you find some of it frustrating, I know I did & on occasion still do.
anyway, good luck & I hope you finally make peace with Lightburn and turn out heaps of cool stuff
Cheers,
Rob
Every single piece of software has a learning curve due to this exact issueâŚnone of it is âintuitiveâ. Thats why there are certificates/degrees awarded for CAD software, design and illustration software, etc. They are behind college classes eith hundrwds of hours of trainingâŚthe amount of knowledge required to learn a software fully is quite immense.
You just need to realize this software, like all programs, have quirks or rough edges that will be smoothed out with time. Lightburn, compared to other CAD and CAM software is infantile stage.
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Because the editor doesnât show overscan, tool paths, and quick moves between burn areas.
Let me turn the question around. Why have a WYSIWYG editor if it doesnât actually show you what the product is going to look like? Whatâs the point of two UIs, one that shows something that might possibly be vaguely similar to what you might get and one that shows what will actually happen?
Except it doesnât actually do that. Instead it only disables the overlap knockout on shapes that arenât completely encompassed (which should N.E.V.E.R. E.V.E.R. be done that way).
If it ACTUALLY âfilled shapes individuallyâ then ALL the inclusions would be double burned instead of being knockouts.
Words mean things. Except in lightburn where they sometimes mean different things depending on what other random unrelated settings you might have (e.g. grouping).
Like lightburn, you say one thing but you mean something else. What you actually mean is that we need to learn how to check for the various bugs, anomalies, errors, and odd behaviors before we send something to the laser.
I am at peace with lightburn. That doesnât mean Iâm not going to continue to report bugs (like not using the same overlap/interference algorithm in the editor and the burn routine). What the developers do with those bug reports is up to them.
This is so trueeeâŚtry unchecking a multi line setup from the first tab that says âoutput sub-layerâ and watch how it just means âoutput THISâ layerâŚI was so confused for awhile as to why my top level line waant outputtinf but my sub layers were. I finally realized once you convert to multi line ALL layers are considered a sub layer. Stuff like this is so low on thr devs list bevause its technically not a bug but a usabillity / clarity issue, which to me, is sometimes worse because it mimics a bug to our minds until someone comes along and chimes in with âwellllll those words dont mean those wordsâŚâ ok den
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Lol.
Interesting discussion. I have seen some odd disparity between design space, preview space, and finished burn, but I donât have photo examples, so I wonât clutter this with it.
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