Overlayed white space

[Munty_Scruntfundle (Tull Clancey)]

Hi there.

Have a graphic and and some text in Corel, both are outlines only, the text is over the graphic (curves).

It exports ok as svg, dxf, pdf, etc, but when imported to Lightburn the graphic shows through the white space of the graphic. How do I get around this?

I’ve tried tracing the graphic and text in Lightburn but I get the same problem, the white space of the text is ‘see through’.

I’m engraving acrylic so I don’t want the fuzzyness of a jpg or png.

Surely this has to be possible, it’s a hugely popular style.

Any ideas?
Thanks.

[Munty_Scruntfundle (Tull Clancey)]

Ok, I worked this out, all in Lightburn.

Import the background graphic and trace it.
Create the text and trace it.
Place all objects where they need to end up, you can’t change this from now on.
Create a duplicate of the text and move it to a different layer, set the new layer NOT shown.
Run a Boolean on both the objects shown. This will create the outline required but delete the text outline.
Then unhide the the unshown layer and move the text back to your main layer.
Group the objects to move them around.

While this works, I can’t help thinking this is a real rigmarole for something that ‘should’ be so simple. There should be a way to mark an object with a ‘white fill’ when tracing, but it seems Lightburn doesn’t deal with objects as solids, they’re all vectors apart from jpg etc.

At the very least could we have a way to automate the above?
Thanks.

[Kris1 (Chris)]

Could you upload a picture of the project you’re trying to do? it would help a lot .

[Rick (Technical Evangelist)]

@Munty_Scruntfundle

It exports ok as svg, dxf, pdf, etc, but when imported to Lightburn the graphic shows through the white space of the graphic. How do I get around this?

I’ve tried tracing the graphic and text in Lightburn but I get the same problem, the white space of the text is ‘see through’.

Please show an example of what you want and what you currently get.

@Munty_Scruntfundle

Ok, I worked this out, all in Lightburn. - Create the text and trace it.

Why are you tracing the text you generate in LightBurn? The text is already a vector shape, although still in a LightBurn Primitive form at that point (right-click to convert to paths). Tracing, to produce vectors would be redundant if I understand your workflow.

@Munty_Scruntfundle

but it seems Lightburn doesn’t deal with objects as solids, they’re all vectors

Correct. The default is wireframe as we suggest this for laser work to not cover things you might need to see. Have a look at this for more on the subject.

Why do things disappear when I fill them, but not when I cut them?

If you have shapes that vanish when scanned, it’s almost always because you have doubled-up shapes, sitting exactly on top of each other, and they’re cancelling one another out, like this: [image] Notice the last pair of circles disappears completely in the scan preview? Make sure your shapes aren’t grouped (you can tell because the selection pattern will be just simple dashes if the shapes aren’t grouped), then use Edit > Delete Duplicates to find overlapping shapes and delete them. This s…

We don’t recommend using filled rendering for editing because LightBurn doesn’t work like a traditional paint program - things “behind” a filled shape may still be sent to the laser, so Preview and working in ‘wireframe’ / outline mode is safer.