I’m covering a two part issue with Lightburn and it’s strictly the drawing limitations.
I have adjusted all settings, also, objects in a range of breaking up, grouping, ungrouping, and different orders, I still come up with these same two problems and it’s seriously hampering quality design capacity.
First, what drove me nuts from day one, I thought I had something perfect, only to come back and find all of my progress vanished. I was looking at copies of the original rendering/model/form, and I just found out when you copy and paste something, as in how I like to do, to have a back up to draw upon should I go to far and need to back up and redo, that copy is off, in a very bad way. Showing in one of the attachments, with two exact copies of each other, with that big gap on the right that is not supposed to be there.
Second issue, I’m stuck on some kind of grid that no amount of adjustments in the settings is able to overcome. It will not let me line up exactly some times, between two positions, in the other attachments showing an attempt to get it to line up, but it will not let me, it can only stick if it’s above or below it. And yes, I’m using the mouse, not the arrows in the interface or keyboard to move the object around. It’s making sloppy work that may or may not show up being all that noticeable in the cut out physical stock, but I hate sloppy work like this and having to work around and settle with a this is good enough because this is all this software can do.
In order to keep LightBurn fast the Devs have chosen to use Single-precision Floating point values. LightBurn is not a full-blown CAD package.
When we see this error reported it is often measurable in Ten-Thousandths of an inch. Part of it is attributed to converting from inches into metric and back into inches.
I can’t quite read the size of the big gap you’re seeing. If you draw a line across the gap, the measuring tool may be able to read the line segment length between them.
Considering the laser dot size and the limitation of most of the machinery, +/- .004 is probably more than most folks would detect on a cut edge. It might turn up in an engraved image with a Galvo, but the work area is smaller so the accuracy increases.
It appears that these aren’t closed shapes or that the lines aren’t connected. With closed shapes, the Docking tool should make for either predictably adjacent or predictably offset (padded) results.
I’d be happy to Look at your file and attempt to understand the cause of the snapping behavior. I may also be able to close the shapes and line them up as you would like them.
From the reading it seems you’re not familiar with the snapping functionality and its behavior. It’s different from most drawing applications but extremely powerful. I suggest you familiarize yourself with it: Snapping Tool - LightBurn Software Documentation
I’m not converting anything from metric to inches, it’s always inches from the very start. I’ve gone over each copy, some times fixing the mistakes more then one on the same copy, for some reason it doesn’t always stay revised so I have to go yet back over it again. I can’t trust a copied object basically.
No ctrl or the rest are fixing the objects skipping out alignment, if it just insists upon still forcing things into snap mode, even though snap is disabled, I wish it would be at least consistent, which would mean I would not be able to have a line that is not in that snap grid at all unlike what it’s actually doing.
Thanks for the offer to fix, it’s been fixed and continues to be fixed on each object, each time. I seriously wished I was aware this before investing both in the purchase of the software, more so, my time to learn it. This may explain when I’ve imported Cad created files, they turn into a sloppy mess because Lightburn has to implement it’s own shortcomings into the objects. Tolerances on output are one thing, when it’s supposed to be precision interlocking pieces of balsa and light ply, I’m even taking into account the kerf of the laser itself so everything is perfect, snug, but it doesn’t always come out as expected. It also makes for a lot more work trying to figure out what line to line up, or more so, which errored line to try to get the closest to.
I am quite aware of how the snap functions work, that’s not the issue, and as stated, I wish it would at least be consistent, I can adjust the designs around them if need be, but they should snap to the exact same grid, not all over the place like it’s doing. I have plenty of graphics software, even very old school stuff that doesn’t give me these kind of issues and they certainly are not full blown CAD.
Did you know here is both a Copy and a Duplicate function? Have you tried both?
No, Lightburn is not a CAD system. It is meant to be a Laser Control System. You will find it is both fast and accurate, as more than 200,000 users have done.
I have used (and continue to use) a CNC CAD/CAM program that has Snap functions not found in any other package, including AutoCad and Catia. Not everybody does it the same way.
You have purchased Lightburn. Make the best of it, not the worst. Visit some of the completed projects and be stunned at what users are creating.
Be happy or not - it is all your choice. Dollar for Dollar, Lightburn is a hell of a lot of software for the cost of 2 or 3 lunches at a restaurant. I get WAY more out of Lightburn than I pay for. I am happy
I don’t design very much in Lightburn. I have used CAD programs since 1980, and I rely on Draftsight, because it has the tools I want. I use Lightburn to import DXF files from Draftsight, and then export to SVG to then import into Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw, Affinity Designer, Inkscape, Silhouette Studio, and Cuttle. If you know how to design in Draftsight or any 2D CAD program, Lightburn imports DXF flawlessly. It goes back to the old saying…garbage in garbage out. Lightburn can also auto connect lines and arcs that are end to end in CAD. It can also remove duplicate lines. What it can’t fix when importing is sloppy design. GIGO.
You might want to pick one of the programs I mentioned above if you aren’t comfortable designing in Lightburn. Affinity Designer has some nice built in shapes, and it isn’t real expensive right now - $41 - https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/designer/#buy
I have spent most of my time the last few months developing parametric designs in Cuttle. It works pretty nice with Lightburn. You can copy and paste from Cuttle to Lightburn. It has some prebuilt templates that are easy to manipulate. But, the power of the program is creating your own 2D parametric files. Note that it is a subscription, so you might not want to pay per month or per year. https://cuttle.xyz/pricing
Actually, open or closed should not matter, in this case, that center line is just for aligning the piece, it’s omitted from the final cut in the stock. Both sides are supposed to be exact copies of each other, but some how lightburn decides to revise them in the process. Using duplicate seems to be a work around, so I suppose I wish it was open source so I can just get rid of the useless copy function all together because it can’t be trusted.
It’s not a matter of switching between metric and imperial, be it, I loath metric for so many reasons outside of mere accuracy which it sucks at since you can only split increments so far and have to come up with a new language of incremental names, much less, memorizing a string of flat numbers is not the same as fractional which is much more to the point and exacting.
These things are not the only limitations the software has, try wrapping sheets and tabbing them to fit with additional right angle sheets they are suppose to fit into. I’ve created a thread trying to cover that, and nope, it can’t do it, you still have to do trial and error, destroy some stock, make real world measurements and corrections, then you will have your tuned in piece to actually reproduce after revising the source and ignoring the math that it’s showing since it’s incorrect.
I’m actually going to dig into finding something that does Cad level quality, no games or needing some work arounds, and may likely end up in addition getting some generic laser controller software, software that’s not going to revise the original files created elsewhere and I can actually copy and paste in it without any games.
This is entirely hobby grade, made for kids use, not anything on any kind of serious production.
I’m doing RC aircraft kits with it and when there are gaps, stuff that’s slightly off, even though the lay person is not going to notice or care about it if it’s some jewelry box, you certainly do hear back from it from the customers on the planes. In this case, on the current project, the fuselage absolutely has to fit the gear perfectly, and when it’s assembled, it can’t turn into what we in the field call turned into a banana. The reason they turn into that is because the parts are not precise and consistent, or the design relies too much on the builders skills to correct and fine tune along the way. Scaling this up, into other fields, such as an espresso cart, at 6-10 feet in length, especially with the curved structures, being off by just a small fraction in the beginning becomes way, way off in the final product and you end up having to do a ton of work to sand, fine tune, cut, twist and contort it back into square position which is not professional at all. I can then scale up from there such as with a house or customer service kiosk and that minor deviation turns into inches off, which is not acceptable as well.
I’ve submitted a couple past projects to the gallery, it’s a sparse place, few examples to look at, and out of those, how many are really designed with Lightburn start to finish?
If you scale up, yes you will magnify any errors. Unless you design big, you cannot avoid this situation. This is true, even when using the $50,000 Catia program. You think they do not cut & fit prototypes intended for mass production? If you expect perfect designs on the first try, you are going to be unhappy for a really long time.
If you need this forum to vent, that is fine. But you are running out of material because you are repeating yourself. Give us something fresh to discuss.
Inches are now feet, it works perfectly with Imperial numbers in the real world. This does not handle feet, it’s not made for that nor did I try to make it so that way with the designs, but still, usable for concept diagrams that are going to be some what close, but not relied upon. Because these little, who is going to notice it’s too small of a number to bother with, scaled up to become an actual number to change in large ways.
Too much I’m not going to just give out the source upon, took a screen shot of it all, excuse the tiny detail, but you can see the match from the photo’s shared earlier to show how extensive this is. It won’t help anyway, it’s not on my end simply drawing this stuff, it’s the software’s limitations.
