From the course: Laser Cutting: Design for Fabrication

Unlock the full course today

Join today to access over 22,400 courses taught by industry experts or purchase this course individually.

Formatting your art

Formatting your art

From the course: Laser Cutting: Design for Fabrication

Start my 1-month free trial

Formatting your art

- [Instructor] Once you've finalized a design for your project, it's time to format it for laser cutting. File prep works best as a series of steps you can check off to make sure you've gotten all of your little details straight. Input your lines into Illustrator and change the color type to RGB. Most machines are configured to RGB but check the laser type in case it uses CMYK. Change your page or art board size to match the size of your laser bed. You may need multiple art boards to complete your project. Make sure your document is using the correct units, millimeters or inches depending on your country. Confirm your parts are scaled correctly. Move your parts as grouped entities to form a part layout, a process called nesting. Parts should have breathing room of about three millimeters and not overlap. Conduct a double line check at this time. Separate individual path types into separate layers and colors. Match color profiles to the job manager colors and then separate your parts…

Contents