Newbie setting the origin / start point

I am brand-new to the CO2 laser, I am adding this to my CNC milling which I have been using for 2 years now. I have watched the 1st 4 tutorials so far have not found the answer to my question. With my CNC I use a software design package called Vcarve pro and when doing a design for cutting I have options for using any of the 4 corners or center for origin (they call it X Y Datum Position). I have found that LightBurn offers I think just the 4 corners. I hate to say it but I always have liked using center for all my projects. Itā€™s maybe the terminology used in LightBurn where I am misunderstanding how this works. My question is ā€œis the origin position the centering position for my engravingā€? If not is there away in the setting to use the center of my designs as reference for engravings. It would start from there and once finished the laser head would go back to that center starting point.
Any help will be mucho appreciated!

Read here:
https://lightburnsoftware.github.io/NewDocs/CoordinatesOrigin.html

The 4 points you mention are only for the machine origin, which has to be a machine corner. The job origin can be any of the 9 points (corners, middle, sides). Machine origin and job origin are not the same thing - Your machine origin is the physical 0 location on your machine, usually front-left for GCode systems, but for DSP controllers it is generally wherever the homing switches are.

Thanks OZ for such a fast response! I will go play with it now. Just real quickly when center is selected will whatever image / design I either create or import if I understand you correctly, the origin will be set to center. I did not see that area 9 positions to pick from DUH :crazy_face:
Again thanks, Tim

The origin is calculated on the fly from the content of your job. If you have a single item, itā€™ll be the center of that item. If you have a collection of shapes, itā€™ll be the center of the whole thing.

A million thanks!!!

Trying to not make a new thread but I have watched many of your tutorialā€™s which must say are great and your users manual is very user friendly and a perfect amount of details given. I may be imagining it seeing how I am a old guy :slight_smile: but I thought you had a test pattern available. I watched your video on how to make one but did not want to design something already available. If it is available could you direct me to the link so I can download it. As always thanks for you time! Tim C

Hereā€™s one:

Thanks you again, your forum is as awesome as the software itself! Tim

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