After designing something this morning and making the cut lines red, when I went to print out the file using the USB stick, it started engraving them instead, when I checked back in on laptop the line colour had changed to black (with engraving settings), so I changed to red again and saved, opened it and back to black settings - any idea why this would happen? - I’m saving as an RD file
When I save as a lightburn file it saves fine “red as cut line” and when opened up still ok, but as soon as I save the same file as an RD file and open it back up it reverts to black again instead of red
Any ideas? If it helps here is a screen shot - the red square is what I save the black square is that file imported back in
You can’t “open” an RD file for editing again. It just imports the vectors, not the cut settings. RD files are in “machine ready” format, so things like images and fills are converted to just movement sequences for the machine, so it would be impossible to recover those, or anything similar.
For example, as a LightBurn file, we save text as the text you entered, where you placed it, what font you used, etc, so we can rebuild it. When you export to RD format, it’s just movements with power - all of the “source information” is lost. RD format should only be used to send to the machine, not to save and re-edit.
Ah, so when I want to edit I need to edit the lightburn file, then save that to RD? - maybe I’ve just been lucky so far as haven’t had the problem before, I’ve edited, changed things, changed colours etc with no problems
Correct. The LightBurn project file (lbrn) is the editor format, made to be as generic as possible. The RD file is what the machine itself understands, and it’s normally one-way, but I made LightBurn import them as a way to recover things just in case that was all you have, and to check my own work.
Unless you’re using a USB drive to transfer to the laser, you’d normally never need to save RD files, just press Start or Send.
ah ha problem solved, stupid me, I had them around the wrong way, weird cos I just changed the colour and not settings and it cut out fine, changed to blue but didn’t touch the settings - must be me, but thx for your help and patience
