LightBurn Demo 09 – LightBurn Auto Join Improvements

The Lightburn Software Series

The Lightburn Software is probably the best generic laser cutting software available (I use it for almost all of my laser work). This series has tutorials, hints and tips as well as the occasional speed comparisons between it and RDWorks. In this session, we look at the changes and updates to the new LightBurn Auto Join Feature. My thanks to the team at Lightburn for allowing me to embed their videos.

Lightburn auto join feature - new and improved
LightBurn Auto Join Feature – New and Improved

Contents

A brief demo of the all new auto-join feature in LightBurn – dramatically better results, and much faster too!

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Video Transcript for the LightBurn Auto Join Feature

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0:00 one of the things that light-brown has

0:02 historically been a bit weak at is the

0:05 handling of DXF files specifically

0:07 recapturing the connectivity information

0:10 so what I mean by that is when we import

0:13 a DXF such as this it often comes in in

0:18 segments now this is the way that DX EPS

0:21 are saved the software that generates

0:24 them amidst these small line segments

0:27 and they are not connected together you

0:30 can see that the marching order here is

0:34 even different which says this line

0:36 starts here and goes this way this line

0:39 starts here and goes this way so these

0:42 are not continuous shapes most software

0:45 that exports DXF files creates files

0:49 like this where there are lots of line

0:51 segments arcs points shapes curves and

0:55 so on and no information whatsoever

0:57 about how to connect them back together

0:59 again

0:59 the software that imports them is

1:01 supposed to just deal with it

1:02 we’ve been rather bad at that so this

1:07 version of lightburn received a

1:09 complete rewrite at the DXF joint so to

1:12 show you it join that was it it’s very

1:17 fast compared to what we’ve had before

1:19 and it also does a remarkably good job

1:21 so if you look at these lines now this

1:24 is one continuous line traveling along

1:26 here very smooth at this point it could

1:30 have chosen to go this way but it didn’t

1:34 chose the straighter path and it tries

1:36 to do that intentionally to give you

1:39 better results so in this case it’ll do

1:42 the corner because that makes sense in

1:45 this case it continues forward because

1:47 that makes sense so on these loops are

1:51 relatively continuous travel all the way

1:53 around the shape much in the way that

1:56 you’d expect ditto for these loops over

1:59 here the ring so very fast generally

Video Transcript for the LightBurn Auto Join Feature (Cont…)

2:06 quite bulletproof doesn’t break the

2:08 shapes like it used to and so on

2:11 if I clear out this file in my settings

2:15 I can change my outer closed tolerance

2:18 now this is the DXF import specifically

2:22 other close tolerance so I’m setting it

2:24 to 1/100 of a millimeter if I import

2:29 that file again as part of the import

2:33 process it’s Auto joined as it should be

2:40 some files having it automatic like that

2:43 might not be the best option because

2:46 it’s possible for files to be fairly bad

2:50 so we’re setting this to zero you’re

2:52 saying I don’t want it automatically

2:54 joined when I import

2:55 I’m going to bring in another file that

2:57 was given to us by a user

3:00 the reason this file is bad is because

3:04 many of these shapes are duplicated so

3:07 the first thing that I’m going to do is

3:10 remove the duplicates shapes 615 we’re

3:15 found would you like to delete them yes

3:17 so after that now the auto join is a

3:21 good candidate if I look at these zoom

3:24 in here these are all small segments in

3:28 addition to being small segments they’re

3:29 actually full lines which is even worse

3:32 will show how to deal with that in a

3:34 moment so I’m going to grab everything

3:38 Auto join that’s done now each of these

3:43 is a continuous shape you can see that’s

3:46 all one in addition if I want to make

3:51 this file behave a little better take a

3:54 look when I’m zooming and panning this

3:57 is panning the performance is not

3:59 spectacular I select everything and say

Video Transcript for the LightBurn Auto Join Feature (Cont…)

4:06 optimized selected shapes change this to

4:11 fit arcs

4:15 now if I look at any of these circles

4:18 you can see they’ve been converted to

4:21 arcs and so the performance overall of

4:25 this file is much better dragging moving

4:27 is very quick so this is an excellent

4:29 thing to do it also improves the quality

4:31 of the cut when it’s sent to the laser

4:33 because it can optimize the output for

4:37 the shape being sent to your hardware

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Last updated August 26, 2021

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