I love the alignment tools in LightBurn but I’ve noticed that they don’t work properly with many polygons. The polygon tool is very useful, but if you make a regular pentagon for instance, then make another regular pentagon, there is no way to center them with respect to each-other. If you use the “Align both vertical and horizontal centers” tool, it will won’t actually align the centers.
It seems like LightBurn finds the “center” of the polygons by just circumscribing a square around it then using the center of the square. This works with any shape with a multiple of 4 sides like octagons, but it doesn’t work with any other regular polygons.
Is there any reliable way to use the arrangement tools in LightBurn to align two regular polygons?
in every tool i know, the “center” is always the center of the bounding box. doing otherwise would give very unexpected results and disappoint most users.
inkscape has a plugin/extension that computes the center of mass for any shape.
select your path, then Visualize Path: Measure Path: Center of Mass → it add a cross that is the center of the surface.
in this image, the large black cross is the center of the bounding box, the small grey one is the center of mass/surface
this solution is not perfect, but you can do this in inkscape and import back to LB, and then try to align the “centers” you have computed with inkscape.
Thanks, that’s a pretty good workaround for now. I didn’t know about the center of mass plugin for Inkscape, I will give it a try.
Yeah I know that the bounding box is the default for most shapes but I would think since the program has its own polygon tool, that it could make a special case for them and calculate the center correctly.
