Now if I select all and apply black, it becomes obvious that there aren’t actually cut lines for the holes in the part. The white shapes are what I want to have cut out of the material by the laser-cutter. To start, I basically have one gray shape that has white shapes layered on top. For this example we’ll just look at the laser gun in our design. The “ division” and “ exclude” tools let you reverse one shape out of another while making it all one object. Now is a good time to talk about using this. The example above was pretty simple because I had already made use of the “exclude” tool. The lines should no longer be overlapping and the object will be laser cut cleanly without any unwanted cuts. You can double-check that your objects have merged correctly by viewing the file in “ outline display mode” again. Using the “ edit path by nodes” tool (F2) again, I’ll select all the shapes. Now that I have a continuous path I can merge my shapes. In the top toolbar, I’ll click the “ join selected nodes” button. Using the “ edit path by nodes” tool (F2), I will select the two nodes that I want to join. I’ll need to fix those issues before I send this file to the laser.īefore I combine my shapes, I need to fix that open contour, or broken path. I have multiple objects all piled on top of one another, and I see a couple of stray points, an open contour, and a line that isn’t connected. See all those overlapping lines? The laser will attempt to cut all of them even though they’re overlapping and it’s not possible.

Looks pretty good, right? Well, before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s view our design in “ outline display mode.” I suggest doing this numerous times as you’re designing and getting your file ready for laser cutting. Pretend you’re me and you want your logo cut out on a nice little stand.

Tidying up your objects for the purpose of laser cutting is best shown by example. These things are super easy to clean up if you follow our tutorial. The laser will read any path in the file, whether it’s stray or disconnected from the rest of the object, and attempt to laser cut the path, ruining your product in the process. Making sure your objects are combined correctly is important for laser cutting.

In this tutorial we’re going to show you how to unite and exclude objects in Inkscape for laser-cutting.

Inkscape tutorial color correction