As I mentioned in a separate thread, I am designing a “stained glass” acrylic picture, which needs to go together like a puzzle with custom-designed pieces. After creating my assembled image using Inkscape…
… I used copying and node-editing to create the individual “puzzle pieces” that will fit together exactly when cut from different colors of acrylic, and then imported them into LightBurn. Most of them are not “shapes,” but instead are composed of separate elements with snapped nodes, that have been grouped. Here is one especially-complex example:
My test-pieces cut just fine, but I discovered that the kerf-offset I needed was non-functional because LightBurn doesn’t recognize a shape in the grouped lines.
I seem to have solved the problem by converting my “non-shape” shape into a high-resolution bitmap, and then tracing the bitmap back into vector cuts with no apparent loss of detail. LightBurn recognizes the resulting shape, and now I can use the kerf offset.
This seems like a working solution, but one that is a bit cumbersome. Since all the end-nodes are snapped to each other to create a continuous path, is there a way to weld my shapes directly, without having to bitmap them?
Ah. I think I found it. “Auto join selected shapes.”
I couldn’t make it work before, but I think that was because the separate “tulip” shape was included in the group and doesn’t connect with what I was trying to join.
You shouldn’t need to re-trace either - You can copy the shapes that are all part of a given “pane”, move them off somewhere to work on, then use node editing to break (B) the shapes at the intersection points you want. Then delete the extra bits and use Auto-Join to put the remainders back together. Does that description make sense?
I don’t know if LightBurn has it, but in Corel, I have a contour feature. I can set it to trace a line just outside my design by what ever space I set. Set it to trace at half your kerf distance, and instant inlay.
I made sure there are no extra bits, and all the end-nodes already intersect.
I have run into another issue. I went back to my original test piece that wasn’t working, and tried the same operation. This is a piece composed of two elements, as below:
I selected both elements together, and LightBurn let me select auto-join… but they don’t join. It’s the same thing I did on the way-more complex pattern, but for reasons unknown this one is behaving differently.
