Coreldraw to Lasercut 5.3 issues

[John T Bates]

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.
CorelDraw Image.JPG
This is the coreldraw image.

IMG_1965.JPG
This is what lasercut imports.

IMG_1966.JPG

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]

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]

That often happens if the various shapes aren't actually 'closed'.

[Bill George]

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]

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]

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]

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/ho...ctor-graphics/

[John T Bates]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

[Bill George]

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

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]

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]

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.