I’ve been using LightBurn for a few years now. My typical method is to draw in another CAD program (Dassault Systems AutoDesk - just like AutoCAD), then save as dxf, then import into Lightburn - no problem! Until recently. Now, my drawings seem to import okay into LightBurn, but when I copy and paste some elements, the pasted copies of the originals go “wonky” and elements of the drawing are displaced. In the attached image of the example, the parts on the left are as they were imported, but the parts to the right have been copied and pasted from the imported drawings, and now the circles are misaligned. This happens with lines of other elements also. I’ve messed with the curve tolerance and everything else in the File settings menu. I just updated to the newest version of LightBurn (1.0.06) and that didn’t fix it. I use Windows 10 - have been for a few years. I tried saving the CAD drawing to different versions of dxf listed, but nothing works. If I re draw the figure in LightBurn, then copy and paste, no problem. But there’s something new LightBurn is not liking anymore with my dxf files.
I’m not sure I understand your question. Oh, I think I see. You want me to upload a dxf to this thread. I’ll change to .txt as you suggested and give it a try. Just a sec… - and thanks for looking at this for me…
Hey berainlb.
Saving to TXT isn’t an option that comes up in my “save as” library. I’m sure there’s a way to do it, but I don’t know what it is. Instead, I uploaded a dxf file. Let me know what I need to do and…thanks so much again!
P.S. If I cut and paste the elements in this drawing as “block” when it’s still in my CAD program (AutoDesk), and then import into LightBurn, then ungroup there, this phenomenon is prevented. I can then cut and paste these parts as much as I want without them changing.
I didn’t realize that DXF files could be directly uploaded to this forum now. It used to be that DXF files would need to be disguised with a .TXT filename extension to allow to be uploaded.
I don’t understand what’s happening here but I can reproduce your results.
Some additional findings:
This doesn’t occur when the objects are Duplicated rather than Copy-Pasted
The first copy always results in the same amount of displacement of the circle.
Subsequent copy-paste operations on the new generation of the objects will result in further corruption of the placement
The “fault” seems to lie with the rectangle rather than the circle.
Hmm Duplicate. I’ve never done that, but I just tried it. So I select the item, right click to bring up the menu, click Duplicate, then drag the duplicate off the original. Though this seems to produce an exact copy, it’s a bit cumbersome. It’s interesting that if, back in the dxf, if I simply “cut” and “paste as block,” then import into LightBurn, then ungroup, I can now cut and paste or copy and paste without the drawing blowing apart.
And yes, I’ve noticed that if I re draw some of the elements of these shapes in LightBurn (and delete the originals), this also seems to make the problem disappear. There’s something odd going on that LightBurn doesn’t seem to like elements of these dxfs. I’ve not experienced this until recently.
Yeah It’s super bizarre. And I can’t identify anything that would differentiate the imported components although I haven’t looked through the project file.
I think your clue about “paste as block” is also very relevant here.
That’s still super odd. I wonder if this is some sort of rounding error that’s retained after the import. Don’t know if original position is retained and referenced in some way after an import. Would make sense if there was a notion of object coordinates vs global coordinates. But no idea how this works.
RalphU, I couldn’t quite follow your description, but I gleaned that my designs were way far away from the origin. I checked it out and yea, just like in your screen shot. So I moved the parts down to like X 100 and Y 100, then imported into LightBurn and voila! I copied and pasted these two figures and they seemed to stay together! When I zoom in as far as possible the circle is shifted from the centerlines, but immeasurably - I’m zoomed in as far as possible. I can snap the circle back to exact center and it stays, unlike before. Well, I consider this problem fixed. Thank you all for contributing.
I make radio control airplane parts and topographic maps.
