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View Full Version : Need some help with Sketchup and Lasercut 5.3



Jonathan Bowen
10-09-2012, 10:49 PM
I just got a Hurricane Laser Agnes 40W Laser. It's working great. We had a bit of a learning curve but things are rocking and rolling now with several exceptions.

My current work flow is sketchup then export to dxf with a plugin and import into Lasercut 5.3. It works kinda... I can import a file once. If I make a change or import a different file then the software crashes like 90% of the time. I open it again and import the same file and it works fine. I'm using windows 7 if that matters. It's annoying and a time sink.

The other bigger issue is my plugin for sketchup. I have no clue were it came from. It was a long caffeine filled day because the laser was 3 weeks later then expected and work was backed up. My old workflow I used when outsourcing to an epilog was sketchup -> export to svg -> layout and text in inkscape -> export pdf. That didn't work and I couldn't get inkscape to work at all.

The sketchup plugin works fine but it has several option. units and type. It does stl and some 3d stuff as well. the two 2d options are polyline and lines. polyline is cleaner and makes the circles actual circles. lines is messy but I can eliminate overlap. I cut a lot of hexes and squares for flight stands. They all have a small circle in the middle. If I export as lines then the circles are little tiny lines and the brass inserts I use will not get full contact on the sides of the circle. They also look bad. However, I can use data check to delete all the overlap lines and get smoother/faster hexes and squares.

Any tricks for either smoothing the circles or exploding the hex/square poly lines? I've tried unit lines and smooth curves but they either screw it up or don't do anything. I'm also open to other sketchup plugins if anyone has a better one.

Thanks!

Rich Harman
10-10-2012, 12:55 AM
When you create the parts in SketchUp set the circles and arcs to have more segments. A good rule of thumb is one segment for every mm of circumference.

I always export to svg using the "Flights of Ideas" plugin. I open the svg using Corel and do the rest of the layout work there.

Jonathan Bowen
10-10-2012, 11:19 AM
I have played with adjusting the segment count but I usually don't get the results I want. The machine can do nice smooth curves and they are faster then a bunch of little lines. Lasercut gets all weird and does them out of order and the head does a lot of unnecessary movement.

I used the Flight of ideas plugin all the time. It worked great for when I was using inkscape. I still use inkscape for my text layout but I have to convert that back to dxf and then import it into sketchup to do the final layout designs. Simple stuff I can do right in lasercut. You have to convert the text to paths before export. Importing text into laser cut always reset the font for me.

Rich Harman
10-10-2012, 3:36 PM
I have never had a case where the laser did not cut a circle or arc in one go. It always cuts the circles and arcs at the same speed as the straight parts - and does so very smoothly.

There is a setting where if unchecked, the laser will jump around cutting in a seemingly random order. It's called "Path Optimize" in LaserWorks.

Jonathan Bowen
10-13-2012, 1:19 AM
Well I'm still working on understanding all of lasercut 5.3's optimization settings. The issue is each circle is made up of tiny lines so it does some add stuff at times.

I did find a solution.

http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=40773

This plugin is FAR superior to the last one I was using. He had a similar issue and was using sketchup with his CNC. Now it exports circles and arcs as their own entities and not a series of lines. It also exports all the other elements as lines so I can run the data checks and see if I have any overlaps. I've used it several times and it is working great so far. I'm laser etching/cutting styrene into very small shapes for wargaming. 1/100 scale doors with etched details. It is working a lot better now.