0:03 so I’ve been wanting to do a video
0:06 talking about the new cut planner for a
0:09 while so let’s jump in for anyone who
0:12 doesn’t know what the cut planner in
0:14 lightburn does or what it’s for it is
0:17 the part of lightburn that decides what
0:19 order to cut your project in so if I
0:22 create a bunch of things in a fairly
0:25 arbitrary order now I’ve actually made
0:28 this bad intentionally if I don’t have
0:31 the cut planner active then like Burton
0:34 just cuts these shapes in the order that
0:36 I created them in and that is rarely
0:38 what I want you can see all of these
0:41 really long travel moves in between
0:42 things that are pretty terrible so if I
0:46 have the default settings enabled which
0:51 are ordered by layer cut inner shapes
0:53 first and reduced travel moves now these
0:56 are the optimization settings and these
0:58 control how the cut planner orders the
1:01 things in your project so if I have the
1:04 default settings on you can see that now
1:08 it’s cutting these things in a fairly
1:10 logical order and the amount of travel
1:14 that it’s making is minimized
1:16 that’s usually what you want so there
1:21 are also a couple of options that
1:22 control other parts of this one of them
1:26 being cut inside shapes first if I were
1:30 to cut the outside square here before
1:34 cutting the inside circle and I had my
1:38 workpiece elevated above the bed on pins
1:41 like some people have cutting this
1:43 outside shape would mean that the whole
1:45 square would fall and I would never have
1:47 the chance to cut this inner circle if
1:49 you cut the circle first and the circle
1:51 falls out you don’t really care because
1:53 the outer square is still held in place
1:54 and when it gets cut it will drop and
1:57 it’s already done so having the cut
Transcript for LightBurn Tutorial Cut Planner (Cont…)
2:00 inner shapes first setting on is
2:02 generally what you want and so you can
2:06 see here it cuts the inner circle then
2:09 moves on to the outside square cuts the
2:10 inner circle does the outside square and
2:12 so on
2:16 also available are some slightly more
2:20 interesting options so if I do this
2:26 light burn by default has scan all
2:30 shapes at once set and so with the
2:33 default options you’ll see that it does
2:36 its cutting the cuts first because I’ve
2:40 told it to and that’s bad so let’s fix
2:44 that so now I’ve got my scans first so
2:48 the scan is going to happen first and
2:50 that’s good but it’s scanning everything
2:52 all at the same time and then going
2:55 after the fact and doing the outline
2:57 cuts if your machine is well tuned and
3:00 fast this is ideal scanning everything
3:04 all in one swoop is a good idea and it
3:08 gets you the most efficient use of your
3:11 machine time for for people who have
3:13 fast machines if you have a slower
3:15 machine or a diode based machine this is
3:17 probably not what you want and if your
3:21 machine is a little bit loose or skip
3:24 steps occasionally or anything like that
3:26 doing all of these scans together and
3:29 then going back and doing the circles
3:31 around them mean that if your workpiece
3:34 shifts or you lose some steps along the
3:38 way when you were cutting the outlines
3:40 at the end they’re probably going to be
3:42 shifted and that means you’ve lost all
3:44 of these pieces so there are some new
3:46 options available number one you can say
3:49 scan groups together now I’ve set up
3:52 this file so that each of these objects
3:54 is a group and that means that by saying
3:59 scan groups for example here use this
Transcript for LightBurn Tutorial Cut Planner (Cont…)
4:03 ambulance as an example if I say just
4:05 cut selected graphics you can see it’s
4:09 scanning all of these pieces together
4:11 that make up this ambulance in one go
4:14 and then doing the outline if I have
4:17 scanned shapes individually set what
4:21 happens is each of those pieces the
4:24 little light on top
4:26 in the body then the wheels and the cab
4:29 get scanned individually and that’s
4:31 going to take more time if you set scan
4:35 groups together then because I have all
4:37 of these pieces grouped it does this all
4:41 in one shot and then does the outline
4:43 and that’s what I want
4:46 so with this file I have each of these
4:50 shapes grouped as I’ve said there is a
4:53 new option in the optimization settings
4:55 to say order by group so if I remove the
4:58 order by layer and just say order by
5:00 group I also have cut inner shapes first
5:03 and because these scans are all inside
5:07 these outer shapes this is probably just
5:09 going to do what I want and so now you
5:13 can see it’s going to scan each item and
5:16 then do the outline and move on to the
5:19 next one and it’s doing these such that
5:23 it’s finishing each fully grouped item
5:26 before moving on to the next group item
5:28 so if I had to stop this partway through
5:31 my cut everything that I’ve cut up to
5:34 the point that I stopped it would be a
5:35 usable part so if the machine skips or
5:39 something happens it’s really going to
5:41 only affect that one piece not
5:43 everything else in the cut if you have
5:47 cuts that are a lot of small individual
5:50 pieces this works really well if your
5:52 cut is one large giant piece that all
5:56 has to work together then you’re kind of
5:58 out of luck
5:58 and you need a well tuned machine but
Transcript for LightBurn Tutorial Cut Planner (Cont…)
6:00 this will help another of the options
6:05 that is new I’m going to bring in a
6:09 different file if you say reduce
6:17 direction or sorry I pardon me choose
6:19 best starting point so we’re going to
6:21 show you what this does without normally
6:25 light burn we’ll pick the starting point
6:28 of the object based on how that object
6:31 was created so these used to be squares
6:33 and I bent the sides and so you can see
6:36 that it’s going to start on
6:38 the corners of them and the circles all
6:41 start from the same point they’re
6:43 modeled from here and so on so every
6:46 circle starts from this side and goes
6:48 around this way and every square starts
6:50 at the upper corner and goes down that
6:52 may not be the best starting location so
6:55 in this case you can see that we’re
6:57 starting up here at the origin moving
6:59 all the way across the shape to the far
7:01 side and then cutting around there’s a
7:04 setting to choose the best starting
7:07 point which improves that so now you can
7:10 see that instead of going all the way to
7:12 the other side of this circle it starts
7:14 close to the upper corner and then jumps
7:18 immediately to the nearest point on this
7:20 shape and travels around it and so on
7:23 this is significantly faster and you can
7:26 see that my travel moves here are 2112
7:31 millimeters or about 21 seconds if I
7:34 just say don’t choose the best starting
7:38 point you can see now I’ve got 2,600
7:41 millimeters and 26 seconds so it takes a
7:43 little longer and I do a little more
7:44 traveling the problem with this is that
7:47 if your machine has any backlash at all
7:49 and you start somewhere in a shape that
7:55 is arbitrary particularly on curved
7:59 shapes so these for example these bowed
Transcript for LightBurn Tutorial Cut Planner (Cont…)
8:03 squares if I start in the middle here
8:07 and move around the shape and the end of
8:10 my cut doesn’t exactly match the start
8:13 of my cut you’ll get little offsets and
8:15 because you’re in the middle of a long
8:18 line they’ll be quite visible so there
8:21 is now an option to say choose corners
8:23 if possible and what that does is we’ll
8:28 start at a corner if it can find one but
8:32 still choose an optimal starting point
8:34 so you can see here it’s chosen the
8:37 arbitrary starting point on the circle
8:38 and then chosen the closest corner on
8:41 this ship and it will choose the closest
8:44 corner on the next shape and so on
8:49 so in addition to that we also have cut
8:55 in direction order so I can say I want
8:58 to cut things from top bottom left or
9:00 right so without this enabled you can
9:04 see that this cut progresses somewhat
9:07 randomly it starts down the side bounces
9:10 back up again then does these parts then
9:14 jumps down to the bottom there’s nothing
9:17 necessarily wrong with that
9:19 some people happen to like things to
9:22 progress in an orderly direction so if
9:24 you say cut in a direction from top now
9:29 it will do the top and travel along and
9:33 then fill it in the bottom if you say
9:35 cut from left it’s going to try to cut
9:39 things from the left side toward the
9:41 right side this can be important if for
9:44 example your machine exhausts over here
9:49 you may want to cut items on one side
9:52 before you move to the side where the
9:55 exhaust is so that you don’t have smoke
9:57 blowing over freshly cut parts of your
Transcript for LightBurn Tutorial Cut Planner (Cont…)
10:00 project there are other reasons that
10:04 people want to do this you may want to
10:07 cut from the bottom up from the top down
10:09 whatever and like Burton will now allow
10:10 you to do this choose best direction
10:14 allows lightburn to reverse if
10:16 necessary and I’ll show why or how
10:19 that’s useful let’s draw something
10:24 relatively simple so if I have a little
10:33 petal shape like a flower
10:40 I’m going to make a few of them if I
10:51 have my default settings enabled which
10:55 are Kutner shapes reduced direction
10:57 changes pardon pardon cut inner shapes
11:10 and reduce travel moves so these are the
11:12 defaults you can see each of these
11:16 petals has cut one at a time and as it
11:19 gets here to the end it slows down
11:22 changes direction to do the next one and
11:24 so we’ve got a lot of direction changes
11:27 at each end it reverses to do the next
11:31 one because they’re closed this isn’t a
11:33 bad thing but it’s maybe not the most
11:35 efficient way to do this if you enable
11:38 reduced direction and changes the cut
11:42 plan is a little different now you can
11:44 see that lightburn has decided that
11:46 it’s faster to jump across to do the
11:50 next shape than it was to pick one that
11:53 involved a direction change nearby there
11:57 is a threshold or a cut-off that’s
Transcript for LightBurn Tutorial Cut Planner (Cont…)
12:00 built-in so it tries to pick things that
12:04 are smart but this if I were to run this
12:09 on my machine would take less time than
12:11 the other version because it’s not
12:14 stopping with each of these pedal cuts
12:16 it’s basically continuing at speed
12:19 moving across the shape finding another
12:21 thing nearby that’s going to be faster
12:24 and take less time than reversing
12:27 constantly so that option is useful it
12:31 may not be the thing you want all the
12:33 time but for things like this it’s very
12:37 very useful you can also see it in play
12:41 if I do something like this if I take
12:45 this shape and replicate it
12:49 a bunch until lightburn to cut this you
12:54 can see that because I started this from
12:57 here and drew it this way it’s going to
12:59 cut that line and then move to the next
13:02 line and move to the next line and so on
13:04 and it’s going to cut these in a zigzag
13:06 and you can see there it’s returning to
13:09 the starting point of the next line
13:10 cutting that line returning to the
13:12 starting point of the next line cutting
13:14 that line and so on this is actually a
13:17 little bit easier to see if I make this
13:20 a smooth path and Bend it just a little
13:25 bit so that you can actually watch the
13:27 cut happen so I’ll create an array of
13:32 these and so now you can see it cuts
13:37 that one scans across cuts this one
13:40 scans across cuts this one and so on and
13:42 so it’s cutting them all from left to
13:45 right now if I change the optimization
13:48 settings to reduce direction changes and
13:50 choose the best starting point and
13:56 choose the best direction in this case
13:58 that is important so choose the best
Transcript for LightBurn Tutorial Cut Planner (Cont…)
14:01 direction means that for an open shape
14:03 lightburn is allowed to decide which
14:06 end to start it from and so in this case
14:09 you can see that rather than jumping all
14:12 the way across the shape to go here and
14:15 cut this way it’s decided that well this
14:17 end was closer to where I started so I’m
14:19 going to cut there and it’s going to cut
14:22 these in a zigzag which is a much faster
14:24 way to do this so you can see the number
14:27 of rapid moves here takes about four
14:28 seconds if I turn off the choose best
14:33 direction and choose best starting point
14:35 now you can see that the number of rapid
14:38 moves is very high and it takes about a
14:39 minute and 13 seconds to execute them so
14:42 much better to turn on the choose best
14:46 starting point and choose best direction
14:49 there’s also a new option that’s coming
14:53 this isn’t released yet but it will be
14:56 released in the 8:07 version and that
15:01 is remove overlapping lines so something
15:05 that happens often let’s do a simple
15:09 shape inside this so I’m going to make a
15:12 grid of these and I’m going to set them
15:20 to have no gap in between and so what
15:24 that means is instead of a space in
15:28 between all of these lines they are now
15:33 touching and that means that there are
15:35 duplicates so each of these squares is
15:38 now two lines or there are two lines
15:42 here overlapping one another and if I
15:45 cut this it’s going to cut every one of
15:47 those lines doubled now our D works has
15:51 an option to remove overlaps and it
15:54 works the problem with it is that it
15:57 affects cut planning and so if I want to
Transcript for LightBurn Tutorial Cut Planner (Cont…)
16:01 cut inner shapes first but I have
16:05 removed all of those overlapping lines
16:08 then these shapes would no longer
16:10 actually be squares so as an example if
16:15 this was my shape let me turn this into
16:19 a path so that I can edit it and I want
16:23 to delete these so in our t-works if I
16:26 said remove overlapping lines this might
16:28 be the shape that I get like that the
16:33 problem with this is that this shape
16:35 doesn’t have an inside so this has no
16:39 idea whether it is inside this square or
16:42 not in order for it to know whether it
16:45 is inside something the something has to
16:48 actually have sides and so here it does
16:51 but now the problem is that these lines
16:54 are duplicates so in lightburn we’ve
16:56 added the option to remove overlapping
16:58 lines as part of the cut planner and so
17:01 the cut planner can figure out what is
17:04 inside of what and then go back and cut
17:08 the other pieces and so you can see here
17:12 that it
17:13 cut the inside shape and then it’s cut
17:17 whatever was left of the square that
17:20 used to surround it and so on and so
17:22 it’s going to do the right thing all the
17:26 way to the end we will have the option
17:33 to allow you to remove overlapping lines
17:36 as part of the project before too long
17:40 but having it integrated into the cut
17:43 planner means that the inside-outside
17:45 sorting isn’t affected and so I actually
17:47 thought it was more useful to do it this
17:49 way first in addition to being simpler I
17:54 think we have covered everything except
17:57 for order by priority and that is a new
Transcript for LightBurn Tutorial Cut Planner (Cont…)
18:01 one which allows you to specify the
18:05 absolute order that you want things cut
18:07 in in lightburn so to demonstrate that
18:12 I’m going to do a simple shape let me do
18:19 this guy and I’ll just make small
18:24 handful of them so these circles I’ve
18:29 created they are all the same if I use
18:34 my default cut settings will go back all
18:37 the way down to just cut inner shapes
18:39 first and reduce travel moves it’s just
18:42 going to cut these in some order that
18:44 makes sense and that’s fine if let’s say
18:48 I wanted all of these wings cut first
18:53 and then these wings cut later I can
18:57 change the cut order property in here
19:00 and so these ones I want cut after the
19:04 other ones so I’m going to set them to
19:05 one and all of these ones are still set
19:08 to zero so that cut order in the
19:12 optimization settings if I say order by
19:14 priority
19:17 means that lightburn will do all of
19:19 those shapes first and then do all of
19:23 these shapes and still do all of the
19:27 other planning that I have told it to do
19:29 in addition to that and so if I wanted
19:32 to get even more specific and say hey I
19:36 want to cut these ones first I can make
19:43 those negative one I can make these zero
19:47 I can make those one and I’ll make say
19:52 these ones too it’s just a number and
19:56 basically a low number cuts first and a
19:59 higher number cuts later and so now you
Transcript for LightBurn Tutorial Cut Planner (Cont…)
20:02 can see it’s going to cut that group
20:05 first and then that group and then this
20:09 group and then that group the benefit of
20:17 this is that it actually lets you go as
20:19 far as fully manual cut planning if
20:23 that’s honestly what you want to do so
20:25 if I wanted these shapes to always cut
20:28 in a very very specific order I can use
20:32 the shape properties and say I want this
20:34 to be number zero I want this one to be
20:37 number one I want this one to be number
20:41 two I want this one to be number three
20:44 and I want this one me to be number four
20:51 this is exactly what it’ll do
20:56 and again within that cut or during all
21:04 of the other things still hold true so I
21:07 can say I want to order by group and
21:11 then order by priority I can say I want
21:14 to order by priority first and then
21:17 order by group within that I can say I
21:20 want to order by layer first then by
21:24 priority then my group and so on and the
21:27 way that this works is it will apply
21:29 this first and then whatever falls out
21:32 of this is then passed on to the next
21:35 thing and so any whole group in here
21:40 will now get passed to the priority
21:42 thing so an entire layer at a time will
21:44 then get sorted by priority if I put
21:47 groups first for example then within a
21:50 group it would order by layer and then
21:52 within a layer it would order by
21:54 priority and so on so this gives you the
21:57 ability to do very very complicated
21:59 things with your cuts and it should
Transcript for LightBurn Tutorial Cut Planner (Cont…)
22:03 allow for pretty much any possible
22:08 ordering that you might want
22:09 particularly when combined with all of
22:11 the other things like directional
22:13 ordering and so on that was a little
22:16 longer than I wanted
22:17 however hopefully you’ve learned
22:19 something and happy cutting
