The Export for cutting dialog

Which plan you need

The window itself is open to everyone: check your design, watch the cut line, read the warnings and fix them, whatever plan you are on.

Only Download DXF is restricted. Laser cutting export sits on the Studio plan today, so on Free or Pro the download is locked and offers the upgrade instead. The pricing section on the home page has the current state.

Which part do you keep?

Which part do you keep? is the first question, and the answer decides which pieces fall away when the machine finishes.

Letters gives you the letter shapes themselves, for wall art or a standing piece.

Board gives you a sheet with letter-shaped holes, for a stencil or a panel with a light behind it.

Facts about your material

Material thickness (mm) is how thick your wood, acrylic or metal is. Thick material holds a skinny part together; thin material snaps at it. This number changes nothing in the file. It is there because it is the reason the next answer matters.

Thinnest stroke (mm) is how skinny your letters may get before the material gives up. In 3 mm plywood, parts under about 2 mm break while you lift the piece off the machine. Set it to what your material really holds, and the warnings follow it.

Thicken by (mm) makes every stroke slightly fatter. Use it when the warnings say parts of your letters are too skinny to survive the cut. Your design gets a little bolder, and nothing on your canvas changes.

The cut line

The cut line is a live preview: the red line is exactly where the beam or the bit travels, the faint shape behind it is your design, and yellow circles mark places worth a second look. A short legend under the preview names those three colours.

Scroll or pinch to get closer, drag to move, and Show all brings back the whole view. Zoom in and Zoom out sit alongside.

Show bigger enlarges the preview panel itself when you want a clearer look.

Show problems turns the yellow circles on and off.

Previous problem and Next problem step through the marked places one at a time, with a counter between them.

Before there is anything to cut, the panel says Nothing to cut yet.

Problems

Problems summarises what the check found, in three kinds: skinny spots, loose pieces, and details too small for the machine.

A skinny spot is where a stroke tapers away, or where two strokes pinch together. Wood breaks there first. The window compares the skinniest spot in your design against what you said your material holds.

A loose piece is one that nothing joins to the rest: a dot, or the middle of a letter like م or ه. The machine cuts all the way around it, so it drops out and lands on the floor. Hold it down with tape or weights while you cut, or glue it back after.

A too-small detail is narrower than the beam or the bit itself. The machine's beam has a width of its own, and anything narrower than that cannot be cut, however good the machine is. Those details come out as a burn mark, or not at all.

When the design is clean, the window says Nothing to fix. This should cut cleanly.

Fixing

Fix sets Thicken by to the value that solves that one warning: enough to bring the skinniest spot up to what your material holds, or enough to make the smallest detail wider than the machine can cut.

Fix all does the same for every warning at once.

Some places cannot be saved by thickening, and the window says so plainly: make that part bigger in your design, or take it out.

Loose pieces are not a fault a button can repair, because they are simply how the letter is drawn. Handle them at the machine with tape or weights, or with glue afterwards.

Downloading

Download DXF saves the machine file to your device. It is the only part of this window that needs the Studio plan today.

If the cut line cannot be built, the window says so and asks you to close it and open it again.