How to align along a 45º line to reduce cuts?

[doktorinjh (Jason)]

I’ve got several pieces that are the same width that have 45º cuts across the top of them. I’d like to reduce the number of cut paths by overlapping the tops, but I can’t seem to find a good way. If I snap the pieces top/bottom ends together, they tend to be out of alignment on the sides, and if I align to the sides, the top/bottoms are out.

then things tend to get out of control when I try to do that across the board:

It’s like I need to hold the left edge and then bring the angled cuts up to meet each other, but I don’t know how to do that efficiently. Thanks for any help!

[Bonjour (Bo)]

when you grab an object on a corner, the cursor changes from a pointer to a circle to show it’s grabbed the nearest point. Use that to align to a point on the other object.

I can’t show you because the grab screen function removes the pointer, but have a play and you will see it straight away.

[doktorinjh (Jason)]

Thanks for the suggestion! My issue is that the corners aren’t exactly corners, they are curved (not my design), so I don’t have any solid corners to match.

[Stroonzo (Jeff)]

I have had this post on my mind all day waiting to find a moment to show you how to go about this, but I thought you had uploaded the specif file or at least a small portion of the work for us to look at.

[doktorinjh (Jason)]

Hi Jeff, thanks for looking! The file is listed under Step 4 of this tutorial:

Laser Cut River Wall Art

Here’s a direct link to the SVG: https://makerdesignlab.com/download/laser-cut-wall-art-svg/

I imported the SVG directly into Lightburn. Thanks again for any help!

I should add that I rearranged the file to optimize it by organizing the identical pieces. Hopefully it makes sense to see that I was trying to match the shorter arms with 45 degree cuts together.

[Rick (Technical Evangelist)]

I think this is what @Bonjour was trying to show:

With the object selected, move the cursor to a corner of that object and notice the change in pointer style. This indicates you are now over a snapping point as described in the documentation here: https://lightburnsoftware.github.io/NewDocs/TipsAndTricks.html#snapping-behaviors

Click and drag toward the desired corner for placement and snap to that corner, then release.

A view once placed and zoom all the way in.

Is this not working the same for you?

[Bonjour (Bo)]

Zackery.

Thanks.

When you screen grab on the Mac the cursor disappears.

[Rick (Technical Evangelist)]

Not with the tool I use. Although it is a bit difficult to capture the capture tool.

[Bonjour (Bo)]

What is the tool?

[Rick (Technical Evangelist)]

TechSmith Snagit | Screen capture and screen recorder

[Stroonzo (Jeff)]

Attached, just how @Rick advises. LightBurns snap functionality is one of the best now. I made two examples of the frames. The bottom set (layer 02) was the natural snap result. The top set with Layer 01, I still used the snapping, but had to do it twice (one for the corner snapping and then another for the sides). Basically, with a little more work on the top set, there is even more overlap with the shorter frame pieces.

doktorinjk-overlapping.lbrn (2.9 MB)

Also, I am sure I made some sort of mistake. I did not comb through this in detail like I would for a job I would be running. So you should really check it closely. And then don’t forget you will need to use the optimization setting for removing overlapping lines.

In Fact… I just took a 1 min look at what I uploaded and can see some pieces I left out. So consider the upload just as an example.

[doktorinjh (Jason)]

Thanks for all of the help on this one! I’ll definitely put it to the test! BTW, the project turned out pretty good: