And yet another d files to Lasercut.umb question...

[Adam Less]

I know I read the answer to this somewhere but can't for the life of me find it anywhere.

I'm using Lasercut 5.3 on a Weike Chinese 6040N laser (which continues to function flawlessly btw). I'm building my artwork in Illustrator (which I'm fluent in) and then importing the dfx.

One project I\m working on right now is a map which has several spots, sporadically around it with filled in (engraved) areas... imagine parks or water areas on a map.

Right now though, if one filled in area is all the way over on the right side and one is on the left at the same point on the Y axis, the laser head just keeps shuttling back from one end of the substrate to the other, filling in line from one filled in area and then one line from the other area on the other side of the substrate.

I could swear I'd read there was a way to set it up so it would engrave each filled in area one at a time, minimizing the amount of time the head has to track back and forth across the substrate. Is that right? I know one way would be to assign each filled area with a different colour and designate each engrave setting for each colour with the same settings. In some cases though, I have upwards of 20 filled in areas, which is a crap load of different (pronounced confusing) layers of colours to be working with.

Can anyone advise?

[Kev Williams]

--change the color of the second one, then set the power/speed/res settings to match the other color, which I assume would be black-

Your machine will raster all objects of the same color that fall within the same Y coordinates, no matter how far apart their X coordinates are. Painting different colors does the trick!

[Bert Kemp]

exactly what Kev said BUT if you have a whole bunch of engraved areas in 1 piece you might get better time just letting it do the whole thing at once. But if its just one or two then change the color.