Cutting Out Circles,Objects, Text

There are unlimited numbers of shapes, text, and logos that can be cut out on the laser.

Shapes

If you purchased the drawing tools package with your software there will be an icon bar located at the top of the screen that looks like the one as shown above.  With these tools you can create most any graphic shape you desire. You may do inlines and outlines and fills of closed shapes (the definition of a polygon). You can "explode" existing graphics (ex: .xlg files), fonts and bitmaps for editing purposes. You can combine graphics. You can do a "sort" or optimization of the cutter path.

Logos

There are only a few file types that are vector files.  A vector file is a file that is made up of lines and can be cut out.  The most commonly used in Xenetech are XLG, PLT, and DXF (version 12 and under).  As long as these types of logos contain no text, they can be imported into Xenetech and cut out.  

To get smoother line segments on PLT files, rescale the image to a larger size and re-export it.

Text

Text can be cut out on the laser as well.  However, it does take a few steps in order to achieve this.  First we need to get the text on the screen and select a True Type font.

• Press Enter on the keyboard and type a line of text.

• Redraw the screen.

• Click the line of text to select it.

• Go to Font | Use True Type...

• Select a font and press OK.

Now lets outline the text.

• Click the line of text to select it

• Go to Line/Group | Wire Frame - Bitmaps/True Type

This will remove the fill from the True Type font and allow for the outline to be cut out.  Remember that you need to have the line of text selected when doing anything to it.

Vector Pen Minimum

This is the key factor in wether or not an object, logo or text will vector or raster.  The vector pen minimum determines the "point" at which the software will transition from raster to vector mode when lasing.  This value is compared to the cutter size of the object(s) on the job layout.  If the cutter size is less than or equal to the vector pen minimum, the output of the laser will be in vector mode.  Any objects having a cutter size larger than the vector pen minimum will output in raster mode.

Modifying the Vector Pen Minimum

1. In Xenetech, go to Misc | Engraver Setup...

2. In the Laser Engraver Setup Dialog, go to Setup Dialog | Advanced Laser Setup...

The vector pen minimum is defaulted to .003 and can be adjusted as desired.  If this value is set to 0.00 then the entire job will raster regardless of cutter size..