Previously, I’ve used CorelDRAW for my laser projects, exporting to RetinaEngrave, but I had some problems with the old controller, so I’ve installed a RuiDa RDC-6445G instead.
Is there a way to get the objects in the correct order in LB? When I export a file from CD as .ai and import in LB, it’s not looking correct as it was in CD.
It appears as though some of the strokes are single paths and width is applied to them. The eyebrows come to mind as a good example. Both Inkscape and Illustrator have a feature equivalent to “convert stroke to path” which will give body to the single line, based on the defined stroke width.
If you look at the original design with fill turned off and set the stroke to a minimum and it goes wonky, you’ll know that’s the case and have to apply stroke to path. I’d be surprised if CD doesn’t have that feature, but I’ve been surprised before.
Not very experienced with graphics suites in general, so not sure what “convert stroke to path” means.
The black lines, like the eyebrows, are lines with a thickness of 1.5 points. In RetinaEngrave, every line with a thickness thicker than “Hairline” in CD would be engraved. I guess in LB that would equate to “Fill”, but I believe that is only for closed objects? Everything else are thin lines and would be cut?
In this particular drawing, the “inside” of the mouth is a closed object with a fill and it is put behind the outline of the jaw. This is what I’m struggling to do in LB (and RDWorks). This and adding a width to a line and having it get engraved instead of being cut.
LightBurn does not use line width as you can set that to any width and your beam is a fixed width. You need to convert the line width defined with your stroke to paths. LightBurn uses these paths to define the areas to be filled.
This might help in understanding how LightBurn uses boundaries to define fill areas.
LightBurn ignores line width when importing, and just follows the line (Line mode) or fills closed shapes (Fill mode, aka engraving).
There are two approaches that work here:
Convert the “fat lines” to enclosed paths, which is what Rick suggested above by converting strokes to paths. Most design software has an option for this.
Export the file as a high-resolution PNG image file (to preserve transparency) and engrave that. This means that everything you see in the original is exactly what will appear in LightBurn, including fills, gradients, patterns, etc.
The RetinaEngrave software most likely uses a print driver, so the source program (Corel) is rendering the data as an image that’s then just being brought in to the laser program to run. We’ll have something like this too at some point, but it’s non trivial to do.
Sorry for the late reply and thanks for the answers and suggestions.
Oz, you’re right. RetinaEngrave works as a print driver, but I guess it can distinguish the hairline lines from the not hairline lines so it knows what to engrave and what to cut since they provide both the print driver and the laser control software.
I’ll try to find what convert stroke to path is in CD. I may also try to export as image, depending on what I’m doing.
