Visicut questions

[n6sout...@hotmail.co.uk]

Hey all,

I have a couple of questions about the VisiCut program on the PC in for the laser cutter, as I am having trouble getting it to do what I want it to do.

The patterns I am cutting need to be done in specific order to stop things from warping/moving out of place.

I have been told that visicut has 2 ways of doing this.
One by using layers, and one by using colours.

I have also been told that visicut can take both SVG files and DXF files, however SVG files do not contain layer data apparently. I was looking to try and get Visicut to order the cutting of various lines by colour, however I couldn't work out how this was done.

I'd appreciate if someone could explain this to me as I am still not very clear on how to get the program to sequence things correctly and am wasting good acrylic with each failed cutting. :-/

Thanks, Niall

[Aidan Dunbar]

Probably the simplest way to do this is just run two different jobs. Cut out the red lines on the first job and the blue lines on the second job for example. Map it by stroke colour and simply tell it to ignore the section or uncheck "enabled". See the attached image.

I think you can also order laser jobs by colour or other property using the up and down arrows, again, see the image. This will allow you to do everything in one job submitted to the laser cutter. I haven't used this reordering feature, so play with it.

If you are wasting a lot of acrylic trying to get to grips with the software, perhaps create a smaller test image.

I'll be in the space on Thursday evening if you want to come down and we can take a look.

A

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[n6sout...@hotmail.co.uk]

Hi, yes I thought you could map by colour however the program on the PC in the workshop doesn't appear to offer this option.
The menu appears different from the one in your image.
Options are group/layer, id and type.
Perhaps the version on the machine in the workshop is not the latest version...?
:-/

[n6sout...@hotmail.co.uk]

Sorry I've found the issue, its not visicut, its the file types.
I didn't know that it won't show order by stroke colour on DXF files but it will on SVG file. Vice-versa for layers.

That said, I'm still having a few difficulty with the program. For instance it won't import the SVG file in the correct scale...it always shows up very reduced in size and when scaled up it I can't get it to sit correctly in the laser bed as the file includes the empty box around the structure.
Likewise some of the lines in DXF files are showing as dashed even though they are continuous when opened in the drawing program (librecad). :-S Can't make sense of it at all..

[DrBwts]

I've had similar scaling issues with CAD programs. Check that your units in your drawing program are in millimeters & not inches or centimeters.

[Rob Whitfield]

The issue is likely due to the fact that the SVG format does not have
any facility for programs to specify an absolute scale.

Therefore, there's no way to really know what scale your drawing is
(unless you know what program exported it), as it's all just defined in
points.
IIRC, Inkscape assumes 90ppi, Corel Draw assumes 96ppi, and older
programs sometimes used 72ppi.

No idea what visicut assumes but I guess it's not the same as the
program you're exporting from.

On the DXF front, it's a finicky format which a lot of programs do not
handle very well or conform properly to the (very odd at times) format
as defined by AutoDesk.
Perhaps as a test try opening and re-saving from Q-CAD, or exporting
from Inkscape as a DXF to test (but don't use Inkscape DXF export
normally - it's pretty terrible, even when using the BetterDXF extension).

[DrBwts]

Agreed Inscape doesnt deal with DXF well at all.