The one thing that makes me reluctant to buy Lightburn

[Andrew Parry]

In general RDWORKS works pretty well. I like the ease of being able to select how many times to cut in Lightburn (very useful), but the messy long winded ways of adding brides in Lightburn is putting me off from parting with my hard-earned cash. It's just 2 clicks away with RDWORKS and that's $80 cheaper !!!!

[Hank Morgan]

Brides? Are you having a wedding?

[fred ungewitter]

I think he'll cross that bride when he comes to it.

[Gene Uselman]

I am learning LB and have not needed the bridging option in LB but have used it upon occasion in RDw. I just did a quick search and found this from a year ago:

cmwwebfx
Ciaran Whelan
Jan '19

Thank you Rick. I did see the boolean video a few weeks back and enjoyed seeing how it works in the software.

So based on the boolean, I would simply import my nested design, draw rectangles where I need then then perform the boolean command to create that tab/bridge manually?

If so this sounds fine for manual insertion of them.

I will take another look at this video as well as the perforation option if it takes care of the complete nested parts on the cutting sheet.

Thank you.

Gene again.......

He is 'clipping' out the bridges from the vector cut line. Oz is pretty good about adding features if enough people request them BTW.

[Jeffrey Aley]

In general RDWORKS works pretty well. I like the ease of being able to select how many times to cut in Lightburn (very useful), but the messy long winded ways of adding brides in Lightburn is putting me off from parting with my hard-earned cash. It's just 2 clicks away with RDWORKS and that's $80 cheaper !!!!

If you don't mind auto-generated bridges, could you perhaps cut the objects using a dashed line (with VERY long dashes and very short gaps)? That's what I did in RDWorks before I discovered the bridges command.

[Willy Ivy]

Andrew, just a little advise. You are going to switch to LB at some point, I would almost bet money on it. So don't do as I had to do before LB was even a possibility and build such a big library and so many files in RDW that you will spend way more than $80 in time converting them all over to LB. Also, unless you already know and can predict how your machine is going to work on every new material you try it on you are going to spend way more of your hard earned money on things other than LB. Just trying to help prepare you for what you got into when you bought a laser.

[Andrew Parry]

Andrew, just a little advise. You are going to switch to LB at some point, I would almost bet money on it. So don't do as I had to do before LB was even a possibility and build such a big library and so many files in RDW that you will spend way more than $80 in time converting them all over to LB. Also, unless you already know and can predict how your machine is going to work on every new material you try it on you are going to spend way more of your hard earned money on things other than LB. Just trying to help prepare you for what you got into when you bought a laser.

I'm using OnShape to create my cutting images and used RDWorks just to import the image. I'm not using RDWorks to create images, so their wouldn't be much of a library to import.
I find Onshape really easy to use, as I've been using it to create 3D printed stuff for sometime and it's easy to use it for laser stuff as an extra.

[Andrew Parry]

Brides? Are you having a wedding?

Funny! Should read Bridges.

[Andrew Parry]

Still sounds like a faff.
It really needs to be as easy option in my opinion.
And it really is a very Laser cutting specific type need. e.g. Bridging in 3D printing is a very different kettle of fish.

But thanks for trying to help.

I am learning LB and have not needed the bridging option in LB but have used it upon occasion in RDw. I just did a quick search and found this from a year ago:

cmwwebfx
Ciaran Whelan
Jan '19

Thank you Rick. I did see the boolean video a few weeks back and enjoyed seeing how it works in the software.

So based on the boolean, I would simply import my nested design, draw rectangles where I need then then perform the boolean command to create that tab/bridge manually?

If so this sounds fine for manual insertion of them.

I will take another look at this video as well as the perforation option if it takes care of the complete nested parts on the cutting sheet.

Thank you.

Gene again.......

He is 'clipping' out the bridges from the vector cut line. Oz is pretty good about adding features if enough people request them BTW.

[Andrew Seymour]

Or you could always set perforation mode on in the options for line - I tend to use 200mm cut and .3mm skip for most of my 3mm cutting and have no problems with either parts falling out or releasing.