Terrible drawing and copy functions

LightBurn Software Questions
53

Developer here.

LightBurn internally works within tolerances that were chosen because they well exceed those of the hardware that outputs the designs, and it results in both performance and memory gains which were deliberate. A lot of users run old hardware, like 10 year old laptops, that are both performance and memory constrained, so using double precision floating point for everything would incur a significant hit on those systems. Given that the hardware we target has an internal precision limit of about 10 microns, keeping our precision tolerances at or lower than that seemed sufficient. I can’t imagine a burned edge piece of plywood holding 1 micron tolerances - Do you disagree?

LightBurn was never designed to be a CAD package - It’s principal reason for existing was to take files from other sources, like CAD or illustration software, and prep it for use on a laser. Over time, significantly more functionality has been added, but it still has limitations, and many of those are intentional.

One issue that was recently fixed is the conversion of positions from internal float to disk format, being done at six decimals of precision instead of eight. (Eight is the limit of the internal floating point representation, six was the default of the “output a number” function)

When you duplicate a shape, it’s the internal in-memory version of the shape that is copied, directly, and dropped exactly where the original was. When you Copy/Paste, it goes through the serialization routines to put a copy on the clipboard in text form, and de-serializes back from that, and so was subject to the 6 instead of 8 places of precision bug.

The beta John attempted to point you at includes this fix and a number of others, but you dismissed it out of hand. That version is really just a bunch of collected bug fixes, and is due for release today or tomorrow.

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54

In this image, you show ruler measures along the left side of the screen that are all “163.84”. In the worst case, your entire display height is within the range of 10 thousandths of an inch, so the grouping of lines shown is within about 2 thousandths of an inch of each other. More likely it’s significantly less than that.

You’re also working at -163 inches here, or about 4 meters off the main page. Floating point numbers allocate numbers to scale and precision, so by having the work so far off the page, you are effectively reducing the precision you can represent.

I do suspect that the recent fix (from 6 to 8 decimals) would solve this for you if you’re willing to try it.

As for your Linux troubles, we’re quite clear in the documentation about which Linux distributions we support. If your chosen distro isn’t among them, you brought those troubles on yourself. :slight_smile:

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56

I’m going to check with my shop manager, but I think she did $960K last year, gross, only using Lightburn for designs and importing other customer designs :ok_man:t4:

Your line drawings above are not closed shapes, so they’re not designed correctly for a laser in the first place. Understand the laser kerf and you’ll see why your argument makes no sense on tolerances.

If you select the entire drawing and press CTRL+D (or CMD on a MAC) Lightburn will make an exact duplication of even a poor design.

Edit → Settings and turn off the Snap to grid and Snap to objects feature, and yes, holding CTRL does also disable it.

Oh, and most important! I almost forgot! BE NICE! Coming in here and barking about how terrible the software is, is certainly not the way to get answers! This is the greatest staff I have ever seen for any software platform! Though I think they might not want to help someone so rude; I wouldn’t!

When you find a better laser control software, let me know! Lightburn has become the software of choice for commercial shops all over the world. There’s good reason for it… read the documentation, though I think you’ll just look for reasons why you can’t learn how to use it and put the blame elsewhere.

:ok_man:t4: Good day!

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57

Tell your shop manager it’s time to start using some legit Cad software by now. I understand they only know this simple, limited piece of software, but it’s time to upgrade to something more substantial, something that can handle all projects, not just the super basic and simple ones.

You are repeating stupid stuff long covered, well before I even opened up this topic, been there, done that, still sloppy how it’s not letting you place something exactly next to each other.

Open or closed, what it’s used for doesn’t mean anything at all, copy and paste means copy and paste, not copy, auto adjust and revise and then paste something different. I needed this line just for alignment anyway, to line up with the other pieces before removing it, so they all are in alignment, and again, open or closed doesn’t mean squat and nor should.

The software was freezing up when I was working with more complex tasks with it last night, it hung for quite a bit before it could process what I was directing it to do. The more complex the design, the less it’s going to be able to handle it and honestly, this is not nearly as complex as to where I’m taking it, design wise in the future.

Solutions I’ve figured out so far:

It can’t handle more then a few simple shapes at once, which means manually moving more complex pieces around, small section at a time, to avoid overloading the software.

Use the scale function, not move function to get better precision, which means revising any object that’s not lining up, and even then, it’s not going to get to perfect, but it’s better then using any move function, keys, mouse, etc.

Never question the quality of the software, it bothers those that like to blow smoke up your tail proclaiming how wonderful and flawless it is and that there is no room for improvement… Ignore things when they are off, they are too small to notice, so who cares if it’s a mess trying to design with it, just don’t offend the sock-puppets when you complain about it.

I learned at least a short cut, instead of copy and paste, use duplicate, it will not alter what you just copied and pasted. This is the one tip I got out of this, outside of insults and arrogance and developer not interested in both fixing it, nor a solution for their own software. I do like taking cheap to freeware on software and making them do what the big boys do, this is not what I signed on board for though.

There you go, solution found, closing the thread…

58

Something is seriously off with your system then - I have test files I use that have hundreds of thousands of shapes, and LightBurn handles those just fine.

If you’re interested in helping us solve your issues instead of just being insulting, I’d like to try to get to the bottom of things.

As I’ve said before, I believe your precision / alignment issue is already fixed, and in a version of the software we’re set to release that you can try right now.

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59

This mindset, that some how it must be on my end has just got to go. I’ve been computing since 1983, so very much software over the years I’ve used and I take note when the platform reaches it’s limits and have to back off along making it multi task of sorts. This happens often with lightweight software, you can’t push it too far or it will crash, or in this case, it was struggling to keep up.

I’m again, not interested in installing a Beta to test, it was a nightmare getting it working on my linux box to begin with, not going through that again. There are many settings where I just wished it let you change them to smaller increments, but it’s not allowing you to do that, and perhaps that may have been something you fixed, but my current work arounds are hardly ideal, at least it’s more functional. I do like taking budget to freeware and make them perform to do things the bigger, more robust pieces of expensive software does, but it’s a novelty of sorts and a challenge of sorts to do so.

What I like about open source, you can revise the software, this isn’t open source though. Someone mentioned their preference for using the right click on the mouse, and that simple menu could be expanded upon. I’ve not been a big fan of hot keys, they are something that have some use if you are coding, your hands are already on those keys anyway, with the mouse combo though, it’s cumbersome to have to let it go, hit the hot keys, then find your place again with the mouse and continue.

There are other things I did not like with the software from the beginning, it’s inability to handle curved surfaces that you want to have tab’s and slots in to interconnect, that alone was enough to make it clear, this was going to be something I’ll outgrow quickly because curves like these are a big part of the RC plane design process, and this simple Curtis Jenny has little of them, the WW2 war birds, to more modern jets would not be realistic to use this software with for that element alone. Nobody is designing RC planes with this software, not anywhere I’ve seen online, the forums, social media, etc., and feeling like the odd man out as to why, I’ve been learning just what it’s not used for that, it’s not really fully capable of handling it.

Just close the thread, not interested in further dialog on it, delete the thing all together, I don’t care at this point.

60

You’ve been complaining from the start that the devs are not interested in addressing your issues. I’m the lead dev, I’m here offering to help, and now suddenly it’s you who’s uninterested. Go figure.

Again, LightBurn was never intended as a CAD package, and I’d be the first to admit that attempting to use it as such would be frustrating. That aside, if it’s bogging down with simple files I’d like to figure out why.

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