I am clearly new here. I can’t get it to engrave and cut. It wants to let me do one or the other even from the same job. It did it the first time but will not do it on anything else?
You haven’t provided any real detail about what your project looks like or how you’re going about applying the settings, so I suspect this could be just that you’re very new and don’t quite get how the design side works yet.
Try this:
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Draw a rectangle
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In the ‘Cuts/Layers’ window, set it to Fill, and set the power to about 10%, and speed to about 300 mm/sec
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Draw another rectangle around the first one
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With that rectangle selected, click the ‘Red’ palette color at the bottom of the screen
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In the Cuts/Layers window, set the power to 80% and the speed to 15mm/sec
You now have a job that will engrave, then cut.
If you’ve been working with files that you’re importing, and selecting them only lets you assign a single color / operation, chances are that the content of the file is grouped, and you just need to be able to ungroup it to select individual parts. If you can show a screen shot of the LightBurn window with your file loaded and selected, we can likely give more specific advice.
I will try to be a little clearer. Before I through my computer against a wall. I can bring in a pic. Set it up and get it ready. Then when I add a rectangle around it for the cut. It will only cut the rectangle or print the pic. But I can’t get it to do both. I have watched 100 youtubes on it and I am dead in the water.
Can you take a full screenshot of LightBurn with these things showing:
- Your design
- Cut/Layers window showing
- Laser window showing
Just a guess here, but turn off “cut selected graphics”
I suspect @Bikemike is on the right track with this. Either disable that option or select both the image and the square.
Check the Preview. It tells you fairly definitively what will be sent to the laser.
I can’t get them to group and work or select both and work. From the videos I watched I thought I had to turn that cut selected graphic on?
Try it without cut selected graphic. And change the order of your layers or it will cut first then engrave.
Thanks, I will try that, I change the layers myself in desperation. I will try it tomorrow. I waked away for the day or something was going to be broken.
If you haven’t done so yet, there’s a ‘Simple Project’ walkthrough in our docs that would probably help you a lot. It covers a good deal of the basic concepts in LightBurn.
Start here: Basic Usage: The Essentials - LightBurn Software Documentation
The ‘Simple Project’ is on page after that.
It worked. Thanks to everyone. I will go back and look look st all the lightburn docs. The first time going through everything I was a little overwhelmed.
The “Simple Project” is intended to help get you over at least some of that. There’s a lot of “stuff” in the interface in LightBurn, and it can look a bit overwhelming.
If you point your mouse at anything and hover over it, it’ll usually give you a small tip as to what it’s for. If you press the F1 (help) key with the mouse over something, it’ll bring you to the docs on the page for that feature. Both of these things will help you get familiar with it, but do that after you’ve followed a couple of the simple project guides first. You’ll have a better foundation to start from.
And of course, we’re always here to answer questions. 
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