Node Patrol

 

(And no, available information on the subject did not help me.)

Yep, them pesky little buggers that make your "select all" size larger than the image itself. You do not see anything there, but when you try to engrave or cut, you get the equivalent to the Microsoft blue screen of death, that "Cut might be out of bounds - continue anyway?". Yet, you do not see anything outside the image which is in the work area on your screen.

Case in point, I was working on a four layer 1/8" Baltic Birch plywood project, and the top layer I needed to paint two different colors. This would be a repeat project for me, so I needed to paint quick and not spend time with a brush. Spray can it is.

You cannot control paint out of a spray can very well. Some options are, hold up a piece of cardboard to block what you do not want painted, mask it off, or create a reusable mask. I chose the reusable mask approach. This was my mask shape.

I made this large for a reason. Do you see any stray graphics, dots? I don't. Yet when I ran this cut the laser was locating in places outside the image, moving around like it had ants in it's pants (laser housing). I took note to research later.

I used the mask successfully, for the most part. I had to give myself a bigger "process window" and move some of the boundaries out to better protect from overspray. In doing so, I saved my last LightBurn file onto the cloud making it R1 (I start my revisions with R0 for the original file), and I noticed stray dots on the thumb drive file Icon that I was saving From. I have my computer screen file open set for Extra Large Icons, so I do see the image on the files on the thumb drive (yet weird I lost that image in the cloud, perhaps someone can give me hint as to why?).

I zoomed in on the area with the dots in LightBurn, zoomed n again, went super crazy and zoomed in so close I could engrave on a Nat's ass, yet I did not see the dots. I run two screens and both were clean.

I used the LightBurn select tool and dragged across the area I saw in the thumb drive icon image. I found them! . . . and deleted them. I strategically did this so as not to grab anything from my mask. I did a select all to see the boundary around my image, and the boundary still showed too far right, and left. I eventually found them all using the select tool. Below is a screenshot of the file icon image I saw from my thumb drive. See the stray dots now?

Now why these dots do not show in LightBurn I do not know. I can no longer see an image on my cloud files for whatever reason. So how is one suppose to find these before engraving or cutting? Below is the "Select All" boundary indicating there is something out there, I just cannot see it.

The image below is the screen enlargement near the top right where most of the dots are. You can enlarge all day, and not visually find them.

Another case in point, I have read on the laser community threads that people will get the notice from LightBurn that "Cut might be out of bounds - continue anyway?", when they do not see anything outside the boundary. One thing I now know is, do "Select All" and take a look at the boundary the selection takes, compared to your actual image. If it is larger in any direction, you have stray dots (nodes) too.

What caused this?

Well, I had to heavy edit the top layer image to get to my mask image. In doing so I had to set breakpoints for nodes so that I could cut what I did not want. Those dots, they are stray nodes connected to nowhere, so they are not visible when you super enlarge and try to take a look to find (or use any of the recommended ways on the Internet to find and delete them). Yet for whatever reason my thumb drive icon for my file did show the dots / nodes. My recollection now is that when I have had problems with files from others, they somehow ended up in the same situation and just left it not knowing how to correct. Stray nodes that places the image size outside the work area, even though your actual image is within the work area. 

"Select All" has not become my best friend. Not that I never used Select All, just that it now gives a new meaning to "opportunity" to find my errors, and errors of others, that stop me from running the laser with "Cut might be out of bounds - continue anyway?".

UPDATE: I posted my problem and finding on three laser FB pages, and was given a tip that I should have thought of, but am happy he reminded me. I went to the "Preview" in LightBurn. I did not see the nodes (does) at first. When I played the file at x1 speed, I saw the laser movement speed up in the "white space", but suddenly slow down and speed up again as it recognized the node. It made a dot on the screen that was very very small to see. I finished playing and saw all of the stray nodes. I went back to my other screen to respond to the person saying it worked and thanks, just to loose sight where all those nodes were on the screen with LightBurn when I looked back. That is how small the dots are. Still, in the normal mode, you still cannot see them even when super zoomed in.

I would like to figure out why a file Icon on my thumb drive I can easily see the nodes, and when zoomed in with LightBurn, I cannot. I suspected that because the nodes do not have properties like connecting to another node, they do not show.

Still, using "Preview" and running it slow, understanding the movement will go faster in white space then stop and start quickly at the node, I will know the general area it is at so you can drag a selection box and delete. In all, so far I found it easier, quicker, to look at the file Icon on my thumb drive to see where the nodes are.

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