User manual · Chapter 4 of 9

Design

Drawing and importing the shapes the toolpaths will follow, and editing, arranging and checking them.

Vectors, open and closed

Everything you draw or import is a vector: lines, arcs and curves joined end to end. A vector whose ends meet is closed and encloses an area. One whose ends do not meet is open.

The difference matters when you make toolpaths. A pocket, a V-carve or an inlay needs a closed shape, because it clears or carves an area. A profile runs around a closed shape to cut it out. An engraving or a fluting follows the line itself and is happy with open vectors. If a toolpath comes out empty or strange, Design ▸ Modify ▸ Highlight Open Vectors is the first thing to try: it marks every shape whose ends do not meet.

Drawings imported from other programs often look closed and are not, by a fraction of a millimetre. Weld / Close Gaps… repairs that.

Selecting

Choose Design ▸ Select, or press Esc to put down whatever drawing tool you are holding.

Click on a shape's line, or inside a closed shape, to select it.
Hold Shift and click to add shapes to the selection or take them out.
Drag across empty space to select everything the box touches.
Ctrl+A (⌘A) selects everything.

A selected shape shows handles. Drag a corner handle to scale in proportion, an edge handle to stretch in one direction, the centre to move it, and the curved arrows at the corners to rotate. Right-click for a menu of the common edits.

The status bar gives the selection's perimeter and area. The Properties tab shows its exact position and size, which you can type into.

Selecting areas instead of shapes

Where shapes overlap, you may want to machine one of the pieces they make rather than a whole shape: the part of a rectangle that a circle does not cover, for instance. Turn on View ▸ Select Areas and click inside the area you want. Shift-click adds more areas, and clicking empty space clears them. The drawing itself is not changed. Toolpaths that work on areas offer this in their Vectors card.

Drawing tools

The drawing tools are under Design ▸ Draw, and in the Design menu. Each has a single-letter shortcut.

Line (L): Click the start and click the end, or drag from one to the other. Each pair of clicks makes one separate line.
Polyline (P): A run of connected straight segments. Click each point, and double-click or press Enter to finish. A polyline is left open; to close it, use Join Vectors or Close by Extending Ends.
Rectangle (R): Drag from one corner to the opposite corner.
Circle (C): Click the centre, then drag or click out to the radius.
Arc (3-pt) (A): Click three points the arc passes through. Use it when you know where the curve must go.
Arc (centre) (D): Click the centre, then the start of the arc, then its end.
Bézier (B): A smooth curve you shape by dragging its control handles.
Text (T): Click where the text should go. See Text below.

Press Esc to abandon the shape you are drawing. The tool stays active so you can draw another; choose Select to put it down.

There are no polygon or star tools. The Profiles tab has a library of ready-made 2D outlines, stars, polygons and frames among them, that can be dropped onto the job and sized.

Snapping

As you move the pointer near an existing shape, its end points, midpoints and centres are marked, and the pointer snaps to them. It also snaps to the corners and edges of the job and to the grid (10 mm). View ▸ Show Grid shows or hides the grid.

Typing exact sizes

With Dynamic Input on (View ▸ Dynamic Input, or F12), a box follows the pointer while you draw and you can type the size: length and angle for a line, width and height for a rectangle, radius for a circle. Press Enter to accept. The setting is remembered.

For a shape at an exact position, use Draw Line (exact)…, Draw Circle (exact)… or Draw Rectangle (exact)…. Each opens a small form: a line's start point, length and angle; a circle's centre with its radius or diameter; a rectangle's corner, width and height.

Text

Choose Text (T), click where it should start, and fill in the form: the Text, the Font (any font installed on the computer), the Style and the Height. To set the text along a curve, select a single open vector first (a line, arc, polyline or curve) and tick Lay out on selected vector.

Text stays editable until you convert it. V-carving and engraving work on its outlines either way. Convert Text to Curves turns it into ordinary vectors that no longer depend on the font. Do it before sending the job to a computer that may not have the font, and before editing individual letters.

Fillets and offsets

Fillet / Dog-bone… changes corners. Choose Fillet (round corners) to round them to a radius, or Dog-bone (corner relief) to cut a small notch into each inside corner. A round cutter cannot make a square inside corner, so a square peg will not seat in a milled pocket; the dog-bone notch gives its corner somewhere to go. Apply it to All corners of the selection, or choose Pick corners on the canvas and click the ones you want.

Offset Vector… makes a parallel copy of a shape at a set Distance, Outward (grow) or Inward (shrink), with corners kept Sharp or Rounded. It changes the drawing, and the result can be machined or offset again. A profile toolpath's offset is separate and leaves the drawing alone.

Moving, turning and sizing

All under Design ▸ Modify ▸ Transform:

Move…: Shift the selection by an exact X and Y.
Rotate…: Turn the selection by an angle (counter-clockwise is positive), about its own centre or a pivot point you type.
Scale in 2D…: Resize by a factor, or to an exact width and height, with Scale proportionally to keep the aspect. It scales X and Y only; a 3D model scaled this way keeps its height. To resize a model in all three axes use its Transform settings.
Resize to Fit Job: Scale the selection by one factor to the largest size that fits the stock, and centre it. With nothing selected it offers to fit the whole drawing. This is the usual first step after importing artwork.
Flip Horizontal / Flip Vertical: Mirror the selection about its own centre.
Mirror Across Line…: Pick a line in the drawing and a mirrored copy of the selection is made on the other side of it.

Duplicate (Ctrl+D) makes a copy offset slightly from the original, and Delete Selection removes it. Toolpaths made from a deleted shape are flagged out of date rather than silently removed.

Editing vectors

Under Design ▸ Modify ▸ Edit Vectors:

Weld / Close Gaps…: Join the ends of open vectors that are within a distance you set (0.1 mm to start with). The repair for imported artwork.
Trim Vectors: Cut a vector back to where another crosses it.
Join Vectors: Chain open vectors whose ends meet into one continuous, closed vector.
Break Apart: Split a vector into its separate segments.
Convert Text to Curves: Turn text into ordinary vectors.
Set up Inlay (Plug + Pocket): Prepares a selected design for an inlay: see the Inlay toolpath.
Vector Clipper: Click a stretch of line between two crossings to delete just that stretch. Useful for tidying overlapping artwork.
Boundary Around…: A new closed outline around the selection at an offset (5 mm to start with). Convex wrap (simple) stretches round it like a rubber band; Hug tightly (save material) follows its shape.
Highlight Open Vectors: Mark every vector whose ends do not meet.
Extend to Intersection: Run an open vector's end on until it meets another.
Close by Extending Ends: Close an open vector by extending its two end segments until they meet.

Combining shapes

Design ▸ Combine Shapes changes the drawing itself:

Union (weld into one): Merge overlapping shapes into one outline.
Subtract (cut the others out): Cut the other shapes out of the boundary shape.
Intersect (keep the overlap): Keep only where the shapes overlap.

When you only want a toolpath to treat overlapping shapes a certain way, you do not need to change the drawing. The toolpath's Overlapping vectors setting and Select Areas both work without editing it.

Grouping, arrays and alignment

Under Design ▸ Arrange:

Group / Ungroup: Bind shapes so they move, turn and scale together (Ctrl+G), and split them again (Ctrl+Shift+G).
Array…: Repeat the selection. Linear places a row of copies at a set spacing and direction, or spread along a total length. Circular places them round a centre, which you can type or pick on the drawing, over a total angle.
Align to Job: Left, Right, Centre H, Top, Bottom, Middle V or Centre, against the edges of the stock.
Align to Selection: The same seven, against each other.
Assign to Layer…: Move the selection onto another layer.

Measuring

Design ▸ Inspect has three tools. Measurements are notes on the screen and are never machined.

Measure Distance: Click two points. It snaps to end points, midpoints and centres.
Measure Angle: Click to set out two directions and read the angle between them.
Measure Arc: Click where a span of an arc or circle starts, sweep round, and click where it ends. You get the included angle, the length along the curve, and the radius, diameter and centre of the circle it lies on.

✕ Hide measurement clears the result from the view.

Layers

Each sheet has layers, listed in the Layers tab on the left. Buttons along the top add, delete, move up, move down and rename layers. On each row you can change the colour, show or hide the layer, and lock it so its shapes cannot be selected.

Layers are more than tidiness. Hidden and locked layers are left out of Resize to Fit Job, area picking only sees what is shown, and nesting can use a layer as its boundary. Putting the parts, the cut-outs and the reference artwork on separate layers pays off later in a job.

The Properties tab

With a shape selected, the Properties tab on the right shows its position and size, and the fields that belong to its kind: the ends of a line, the centre and radius of an arc, the text and font of a text object. Type a value and press Enter to change it.

Importing drawings and pictures

The import commands are on the Import card of both the Setup and Design stages, and in the File menu.

Import SVG…: Brings the artwork in as editable vectors, at its true size, centred on the stock. If it arrives at the wrong size, check the units the drawing was saved with; Resize to Fit Job will fit it to the stock.
DXF: Open a DXF with File ▸ Open…. It opens as a new job, and its dimensions are read as millimetres.
Import Image…: Places a picture (PNG, JPEG, BMP, GIF or TIFF) on its own layer, sized to about nine-tenths of the stock. Use it to trace over by hand, or as the source for a Photo V-Carve or Sketch Carving.
Import 3D Model (STL)…: See the 3D models chapter.

Trace Image to SVG

Trace Image to SVG… turns a picture into vectors. It works best on clean, high-contrast artwork such as a logo or a line drawing; a photograph traces into a mass of contours.

Choose the picture.
Under Pick up as vectors, choose By shade to split the picture into light and dark, or By colour to pick out one colour you click on.
For shade, move the Shade threshold until the highlight covers the shapes you want and nothing else. Pick lighter side traces the light areas instead of the dark ones, which is what white lettering on a dark background needs. For colour, click the picture to set the Target colour and adjust the Colour tolerance.
Set Smoothness / simplify: raise it until the outline starts to lose detail, then come back a step. Round corners suits organic artwork; turn it off for lettering and anything with real corners.
Raise Ignore specks smaller than a little to throw away scanner dust and JPEG speckle, each of which would otherwise become a tiny shape and a plunge.
Leave Also add vectors to the design on to put the result straight into the drawing, and save the SVG.

The Profiles library

The Profiles tab on the left holds a library of ready-made ornaments, grouped by kind and searchable with the Filter box. There are two sorts in the one list: 3D reliefs (domes, petals, mouldings and the like) that the 3D toolpaths carve, and 2D outlines that any 2D toolpath can follow. The tooltip on each says which it is.

Double-click an item, press Place on job, or drag it onto the drawing to put it where you drop it. Reliefs go on a layer called "3D Profiles" and outlines on "2D Profiles". A placed relief can be moved, resized and made to stand more or less proud with the Transform settings. Save as SVG… writes an outline out as a file.