Is there any way to discretize all individual characters in text (un-grouping)? The Boolean functions are too tedious when breaking up large text strings into individual letters.
I’m using lightburn’s text editor to create multiple text strings, which are curved using the built in arching function. My goal is to discretize the letters into individual letters, and then regroup them into smaller subsets that can then be applied to their own individual pages to speed up engraving scan time (to mimimize gantry travel time between letter groups)
Also is there a bisect function in lightbulb that allows the user to split a shape into two pieces and still retain both sides? (Not a Boolean subtract/difference function?).
Sorry if this has previously been discussed, performed searches and browsed through the FAQ listings, but couldn’t find anything.
Yes, with some consideration. Text, in LightBurn is known as a Primitive Shape, and has special properties as text. To do what you want, you need to change this, which will also change your ability to “edit” it as text.
You can select the text, right-click to see menu and select ‘Convert to Path’’ to break this text into shapes. You can then select the individual shapes that make up each letter and ‘Group’ them together. Then arrange each letter group as you’d like to form the word, ‘Group’ that and place on the new layer.
We call it ‘Cut Shapes’, found under the ‘Tools’ menu.
A relatively new addition, it’s similar to the Boolean tools, but smarter - Shapes keep their original layer settings, and it understands that filled shapes need to be closed, but line cuts need to be left open. The Cut Shapes tool does not work on images (yet) but we plan to support this in the future as well.
A few examples of it in use:
Select some shapes, then select a closed outline to use as the cutting shape, and go to ‘Tools’→’Cut Shapes’. The result will be two groups - One for everything inside the cutter, and one for everything else. Tip, if you want to repeat the cut, duplicate the cut shape first, as it will be deleted when used as a cutter.
