LightBurn Demo 09 – LightBurn Auto Join Improvements

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