I have a flat box that has 16 cutouts that are all the same size lets say .015mm x 100mm. When using different sizes of material I would want to change only the .015mm to .125mm. If I could create a component and only change one I would want it change the other 15 at the same time. Anyone know how to do this or is this a feature request?
What you are talking about is parametric modeling, which we do not support at this time.
Thereâs an existing feature request for it here: Parametric Dimensioning ¡ LightBurn
If your needs are only to scale the entire object in X and/or Y you could do this without a full parametric solution.
The Numeric Edits Toolbar will affect the position/size of every selected object. In your example, if you select all 16 cutouts at the same time, you can resize all of them at the same time using the toolbar. The challenge there is that width/height information displayed represents the entire selection area of all shapes (not just one) so depending on the layout of the shapes youâd have to adjust your resize parameters accordingly.
Might want to peruse this article on the various box generators.
You donât have to resort to text editing for that - The âWidthâ and âHeightâ of the rectangle are shape properties, and can be edited in the Shape Properties pane in LightBurn - you can even edit many at once. This will size them from their individual centers, like this:
2 Likes
I think this is what I am looking for. When I said component I was referring to a program called sketchup which allows you to create a âcomponentâ if you had 100 of those components well say like fence posts and you wanted to change them from 4 feet to 5 feet you only change 1 and the other 99 are changed accordingly. What I am doing here is a simple box being made from various thicknesses of cardboard. If I change the thickness the box inserts will need to be made bigger or smaller based on the size of the cardboard being cut. My slider box has 16 cutouts that would need to match the thickness of the cardboard being cut so being able to make them into a component would allow me to change 1 and the other 15 are changed. When I select all 16 cutouts and go to the shape tab I donât see anything below the âLockedâ button. I donât see Width, Height or Corner Radius. I am using the DSP version 1.0.06.
Width and height options would only be available if the objects were still rectangles created in LightBurn. If it has been converted to a shape or imported from another tool those controls would not exist.
You can still scale the size using the numeric controls with any shape.
This is what I am doing is resizing by turning off the lock so I can just get the thickness to change. Just trying to save time by only touching 1 instead of 16 shapes. The shape property box would have worked but they are not rectangles created in Lightburn. They are SVGâs brought in from another program. So it looks like this may be a feature request?
You can still do that with the numeric edits. Examples:
- if the shapes are along the x-axis and you want to change height, select all shapes on x-axis, type new height value
- similarly, you can do this with y-axis and width
- if you want to do this with unaligned shapes you could do this by selecting all shapes and using the scaling factor. This is a little more work as youâd have to calculate the required value.
This doesnât work if the objects arenât natively rectangles. If theyâre just a path of four lines that happen to form a rectangle, itâs not going to have the properties the rectangle has, like width, height, and corner radius.
If they were actually rectangles created in something, and were exported as rectangles in the SVG, those properties would be there. I suspect whatâs happened instead is that they were just exported as generic shapes.
If you created these in another program that already has a components feature, the best option is going to be to make the change there, then re-import into LightBurn. Itâs extremely unlikely weâll ever have any sort of parametric modeling, as this would require a very fundamental rewrite.
I hadnât realized this. Looks like this is true for rectangles and ellipses. Is this true for any other shape?
Conversely, it looks like if you do a copy/paste from Inkscape everything is converted to a path in the process and does not preserve shape information?
From SVG I think itâs just rects and ellipses. I wouldnât expect copy/paste to alter the content, but I canât say for sure it wonât - that would be InkScape behavior, not ours.
Okay. Thanks. Thatâs good to know.
When I tested it for a rectangle it lost the shape information. This is interesting since its preserved within Inkscape. That would mean Inkscape is copying two forms of the shape to the clipboard and only making one available outside the applicationâŚ
Thanks. That worked for me. I didnât even consider it because I had only copied and pasted a single rectangle. Didnât occur to me that it would be a group of 1 object.
Thanks @RalphU, will ask the team to take a look, might take a bit (week), but weâll take a look as soon as possible. 
So the little squares need to accept a .15 piece of a cardboard tab that will go into those holes. In this example there are 8 holes. When I change the width of the cardboard I just want to change one of those holes and have it push out to all of those holes at .15 and cut it at the same width with the .15 height. So if I had 10000 squares I only want to touch 1. Not 10000. If the ânumeric exampleâ is the answer, I just donât understand how to do it.
Based on your image my approach wonât work for all objects at one time unless youâre okay with the placement of the objects changing. However, you could do this in batches. Iâll go through both scenarios.
I had a hard time following your specific example in terms of the starting dimensions and the change but letâs say this is the scenario:
- Current width of each hole/slot is .30mm
- You want to change width of all holes/slots to .15mm while leaving height the same
Approach 1 - column by column
- select all holes/slots that are in one vertically aligned column
- deselect the lock symbol
- type .15 into the width field and tab or enter to complete the transformation
- repeat for next 3 columns
Approach 2 - all at once - this will change the position of the holes
- determine that target width is 50% of original (.15mm/.30mm = .5)
- select all slots
- disable lock symbol in numeric edits toolbar
- enter 50 into the width % scaler, then press tab or enter
This should have changed all the widths of all selected objects to the target width.
Note that in both approaches that the 3x3 radio button grid determines from which position the transform will occur. The grid applies to the full area of all selected objects.
For something sufficiently complex you may want to go back to the source of the design and initiate the change there.
Thank you. I have been using approach#1. This works, however, I still see the incredible value of a named component or named shape. Imagine if you had 1000 of those slots scattered so not in a uniform horizontal line or a uniform vertical line. If they were all the same named component or named shape you could change 1 and the other 999 would simultaneously change. If the image is coming from another program or source it would also be nice if the shape properties box would work. My picture example is ungrouped so not sure why the boxes need to be ârecreatedâ in LightBurn to get the shape properties box to work. Thanks again for your help!