Respect "Fill all shapes" across separate layers?

[cggorman (Chris)]

LB 1.4.04 GRBL on Win10 via USB.

Not sure if I’m missing something, but I have been able to set up any project with multiple fill layers, all set to “fill all”, so that it scans all layers in one pass.

I can achieve this if I flatten the fill layers into a single layer.

For example, I have four fill layers with the only difference being power. I set them all to 100% power, edit the power scale to my desired intensity, select all, then collapse all into a single layer.

Unfortunately, this makes editing power rather difficult if the design is sufficiently complex.

I can cut my job time in half by doing this, so I suffer the edit difficulties, but I would much rather have LB respect the “fill all” setting for all layers of the same type. I can understand layers of different “cut” types demanding a separate pass, perhaps even those with differing speeds. But, if the only change is power, the effective combined result is identical to a grayscale image scanning process, no?

I understand I could create the design as an image and just use grayscale or passthrough but I like having objects retained as paths/vectors for edit flexibility and having more absolute control over power.

[berainlb (PY)]

Note that two designs differentiated only by layer assignments are not necessarily equivalent in ouput.

Check out this example. Note that the two geometries are the same. However, the example at right has layer assignments across two layers. Note the negated space on the left.

Here’s the correlating Preview for this design. Note the negative space on left. Also notice how overlapping portions are actually double burned on the right:

[cggorman (Chris)]

Yes! Excellent point! I had blinders on to the alternative design methods. I would do the same thing (on the left) with different object shapes. More complicated, but a different way of thinking. I struggle with visualizing the “negative space” results, so I avoid doing that.

Thank you for making me step out of my little box!