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John T Bates
01-27-2016, 12:44 PM
Hey all, new to the forums.

I've got a project I'm working on, and it's really fairly simple. But, I'm new to lasercut 5.3 and I'm having, I guess, translation issues between coreldraw and lasercut. I have an image, it's black and white, I want the black engraved and the white left alone. When I save the image as a .dxf and import it into lasercut, it comes out as a line drawing, which actually looks ok, but when it engraves, it's not engraving what's on the screen. Can anyone give me any advice on how to get lasercut to simply engrave what I created in corel?

Here are some images of my project.
330430
This is the coreldraw image.

330431
This is what lasercut imports.

330432

This is the final product from the laser. I want the detail that's on tire and I don't want the text filled in on the "O" and "A".

I used to have a FSL hobby laser, and upgraded to a rabbit last year. I have no issues cutting, but engraving is starting to give me fits :)

Thanks for any help

John

Bill Carruthers
01-27-2016, 2:52 PM
John - it's kind of hard to explain especially as I'm the world's worst typist- but you have to ensure that the different segments of the dxf file are set to be "scanned" and not cut - try selecting (by boxing) the whole image and then apply a "scan" color layer to it. Or also save it as a bmp or jpg in coreldraw and then import it into Lasercut as such.

Julian Ashcroft
01-27-2016, 3:01 PM
That often happens if the various shapes aren't actually 'closed'.

Bill George
01-27-2016, 3:15 PM
That often happens if the various shapes aren't actually 'closed'.

For raster or engraving they don't need to be "closed", vectors will need to be on most machines.

Rich Harman
01-27-2016, 3:16 PM
Simplest way is to convert the dxf to a bmp in Corel.

Better way is to make sure all the shapes are closed. The "Smart Fill" tool works wonders for this sort of thing.

Rich Harman
01-27-2016, 3:19 PM
For raster or engraving they don't need to be "closed", vectors will need to be on most machines.

Yes, the shapes do need to be closed. If they aren't closed then they are just a line with no width. Without the shapes being closed there is no way for the software to know which side the fill is to be, nor where the extents of the fill are.

Bill George
01-27-2016, 4:01 PM
Yes, the shapes do need to be closed. If they aren't closed then they are just a line with no width. Without the shapes being closed there is no way for the software to know which side the fill is to be, nor where the extents of the fill are.

Raster or engraving is just placement of dots in a pattern. If I take a jpg file into my machine for engraving I have never had to close a shape for it to raster engrave. Never gave it a second though, if its a dxf file a different story.

http://www.artifacturestudios.com/how-to-understand-the-difference-between-raster-and-vector-graphics/

John T Bates
01-27-2016, 4:29 PM
So turns out, lasercut was adding a layer, or maybe seeing a layer that corel wasn't showing. I noticed I had several different shades of grey it had assigned for cutting/engraving. When I set the engrave power to zero and ran the job again, it came out fine. Since this was originally a black and white bitmap, not grey-scale, just black and white, is there a way to prevent this from happening? Or a way to actually remove the shades of grey layers, rather than just set them to zero power?

The layer that was being added was an outline, which was closed, so it was just engraving inside all the closed parts of that outline.

Bill George
01-27-2016, 4:36 PM
Can't you just assign colors and not have to use Layers? That is what I do in Corel, but for the ULS laser it only recognizes certain colors. When I was using my Chinese laser and Lasercut it made no difference what colors I used because in the Lasercut program that is where you assigned the power, speed and etc to each color.

John T Bates
01-27-2016, 4:39 PM
I didn't use layers. I converted a .tiff to a black/white bitmap in corel. There were no other colors. When I saved it as a .dxf and imported it to lasercut, it added greys. There were two outline boxes around the image that were different colors, but the logo itself was only black. Lasercut seemed to create its own layers.

Bill George
01-27-2016, 4:56 PM
I didn't use layers. I converted a .tiff to a black/white bitmap in corel. There were no other colors. When I saved it as a .dxf and imported it to lasercut, it added greys. There were two outline boxes around the image that were different colors, but the logo itself was only black. Lasercut seemed to create its own layers.

Try just leaving as a BMP and Raster or Engrave. Or is it something you need to Vector?
Was the original file color? What Lasercut was trying to do is create layers by shade because it had no color info, the layers or colors were so you could assign power, speed and whatever else you can change or set.

John T Bates
01-27-2016, 5:10 PM
I'll try that Bill. No, nothing that needs to be vectored. It had just been recommended to me to always import as a .dxf to lasercut. Like I said, I'm new to the software :D

Bill George
01-27-2016, 5:32 PM
I'll try that Bill. No, nothing that needs to be vectored. It had just been recommended to me to always import as a .dxf to lasercut. Like I said, I'm new to the software :D

As long as its just an image or bitmap/jpg it will work. Just assign colors or shades as you see fit. Trial and error will let you learn a little more than someone telling you.

John T Bates
01-27-2016, 5:50 PM
As long as its just an image or bitmap/jpg it will work. Just assign colors or shades as you see fit. Trial and error will let you learn a little more than someone telling you.

Hehehehe, I'm all for trial and erroing my way through new software, I'm still bumbling about with it. This just happened to be a job I needed to get done asap :). Speaking of trial and error. I can't seem to get the starting position of the laser to save to a job. So if I make a jig for a project, all I have to do is open the jig and place the materials. Am I just overlooking it? I found the settings for default position, upper left, lower right, etc... but not for save the start position for this job. My google-fu seems to be failing me on finding an answer for it :)

Rich Harman
01-27-2016, 6:11 PM
Raster or engraving is just placement of dots in a pattern. If I take a jpg file into my machine for engraving I have never had to close a shape for it to raster engrave.

Sure, for bitmaps there is nothing to close - not applicable. You can raster engrave a bitmap and you can raster engrave a vector image. The OP was working with a vector format, it absolutely needs to be comprised of closed shapes in order for it to raster properly.

Bill George
01-27-2016, 6:30 PM
Hehehehe, I'm all for trial and erroing my way through new software, I'm still bumbling about with it. This just happened to be a job I needed to get done asap :). Speaking of trial and error. I can't seem to get the starting position of the laser to save to a job. So if I make a jig for a project, all I have to do is open the jig and place the materials. Am I just overlooking it? I found the settings for default position, upper left, lower right, etc... but not for save the start position for this job. My google-fu seems to be failing me on finding an answer for it :)
You should be able to put your material on the table and move the head over with the arrow keys and pick a start point and Enter it into the keypad. With my Chinese laser I would always use the Center of the job and then find the center of the material and use that. With my ULS its set to do Upper Left Corner so I just reset the head X-Y setting to the Upper Left of the Material and Save.

I went back and compared the first image to the result. You might have either used too much power and the detail in the front wheel got covered up or you can also set layers Not to Output or make the power very low in the color. Try some settings on a scrap piece and you will see what I mean.

Rich, I am sorry but I must of missed the part where he converted the Tiff file to BMP and then to a Vector?

Rich Harman
01-27-2016, 6:42 PM
Rich, I am sorry but I must of missed the part where he converted the Tiff file to BMP and then to a Vector? What he has pictured was a Raster file on the screen as there were no closed vectors.

It's the second image, the one that was imported into Lasercut that is the vector. The first image is when it was still in Corel.

Bill George
01-27-2016, 6:47 PM
It's the second image, the one that was imported into Lasercut that is the vector. The first image is when it was still in Corel.

It's my guess it would be much better as Raster.

Rich Harman
01-27-2016, 10:20 PM
It's my guess it would be much better as Raster.

I assume you mean it would be better if he had imported the tiff/jpg/bmp/whatever into Lasercut. Yes, it would have engraved properly but I do think that a vector file is better because it can be scaled and easily edited. A bitmap type file must be re-exported if the intended size of the engraving changes. It also will take longer to engrave a bitmap because the laser sweeps the entire width of the image, even if there is nothing to be engraved in that portion.

However, for some images I do think a bitmap is superior. The sweeping-the-entire-image thing can be advantageous when engraving something where the width changes suddenly. An example is a line of text where there is a single letter that extends below the rest like the "p" in "... the one that was imported into Lasercut that is the vector."

Travis Reese
01-28-2016, 5:18 PM
John, I'm fairly new to this so I may get corrected. But with LaserCut if you have the "immediate" checkbox checked the job will always start from where the laser head is currently positioned. If you want it to start at a specific spot on the table then you need to move your artwork in lasercut to wherever it is on the table you want it to start. Then remove the immediate checkbox. It will always start at that same spot when immediate isn't checked.

Rich Harman
01-28-2016, 10:20 PM
I can't seem to get the starting position of the laser to save to a job.

In LaserWorks there is a menu box with three options in it. It sounds like it is a bit different than LaserCut.

Machine zero - It cuts relative to the 0,0 position of the machine. This is the one you would want to use for jigs.
Current Position - It begins the operation wherever the laser head happens to be when you run the file. This is the one I use 95% of the time.
Origin - Similar to "Current Position". This allows you to determine where the origin is. You move the head to where you want it, hit the "Origin" button on the LCD panel then when you start the job, the laser moves to that origin spot and then begins the operation as if it had been there when you pressed start.

Once in a while for reasons unknown to me that setting will spontaneously change, causing "Frame Slop" errors. I've learned to verify that it is set correctly before cutting anything important.

Travis Reese
01-28-2016, 10:49 PM
It does indeed sound like laserworks is different. In LaserCut Machine Zero is the same as not checking the Immediate box. Current Position is just like checking the immediate box in LaserCut. What you're calling Origin I call Set Anchor on my machine with a Leetro 6565 controller.

George M. Perzel
01-29-2016, 5:26 PM
Hi;
Forget the dxf import. Do your design work in Corel and import the image to be rastered as a bitmap and anything thing to be vector cut as an AI file. Import the bitmap first and then the AI file will import on top of it. Has worked every time in the last five years.
Good Luck
Best Regards,
George
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