Designing Laser Cut Structures with Adobe Illustrator

[Music] howdy folks dave here at thunder mesa studio you know since i started using the laser cutter to help me with structures i received tons of questions about the machine and what kind of design software i use to get that done if you've been wanting answers to those questions you're in luck because today's video is a basic tutorial on using adobe illustrator to design laser-cut structures now i've been using the adobe creative suite for many years in my work as an illustrator and graphic designer so i was pretty comfortable adapting illustrator for use with the laser now for those unfamiliar adobe illustrator combines the vector graphic capabilities of a basic cad program with specific and specialized tools needed in the world of visual design i know the learning curve can be steep but there are hundreds of online tutorials available from adobe and others or you could do what i had to do several years ago and go back to school at a community college to learn the modern tools i needed for my chosen trade what you need to know right now is that like other cad software illustrator uses vectors mathematical formulas to create lines and shapes on your screen rather than rasterized images like say a jpeg that relies on a fixed number of pixels that means the design can be virtually any size without using a ton of computer memory and they're ideal for communicating with cutting and engraving machines and while i can't cover everything in this tutorial the best way to get started is to quit talking and start doing so let's go the structure i'll be recreating for the laser cutter is goldie's place from knott's berry farm a fairly basic false front western building what you won't be able to see in the following screen captures is my other screen where at least a half dozen photos of this structure are displayed as reference material so the first thing we want to do is fire up adobe illustrator and open a new document so i think we'll just go ahead and make it eight and a half by eleven in the landscape mode yeah and we want it to be a rgb color space not cmyk uh that'll be important later on when we go to uh uh import files to the laser create the document and now the next thing i want to do is create a grid go up here to preferences and then down to guides and grid click on that i want to create a grid that's a quarter inch so 0.25 with 12 subdivisions representing 12 scale inches hit ok and then we go up to view and scroll down to show grid and there is our scale grid then we want to come down to snap to grid so the shapes that we create will conform to that o scale grid i also like to hit show the rulers so i can see the actual size relative to the scale size that i'm creating and then of course we want to save our document and we'll go ahead and save this as goldie's place click save and okay now i usually like to start on the front of the building so i'll just go over here to the left and grab the rectangle tool and click and drag not really worried about the size just yet i do want to make that clear so i'll hit that and then i want to adjust the size of the stroke around the outside to 0.25 points which i find a good size to work with from the tool palette i want to use the black arrow the selection tool and then go over to properties on the right and then i can size my rectangle i i want a rectangle that's about 15 feet wide by a scale 24 feet high so we need to make that 3.75 wide and let's see 24 feet would be 6 inches high so now we have the correct dimensions for the front of our building so go up here to the top and use the centering tools to move it to the center of our workspace and then i want to use the rulers go up here and grab all you got to do is go up and click and grab from the ruler and pull down and you'll get a guideline and i want to use that to mark the demarcation between the bottom floor and the second story i'm going to count up here there setting that for now at 11 feet i can always change it later on of course then i want to reach over to the left hand ruler and click and drag to create a guide marking the center of the building and if you've ever lost hours of work like i have you know to save it early and often now i want to go over to the right to the layers palette and we're going to name this layer walls then i'll create a second layer and we're going to name that one are we going to call that doors and windows click ok all right using different layers for different elements in the design allows you to work on those elements without disturbing the things underneath it's also handy for figuring out the different layers of materials you might need when it comes to laser cutting and you can lock and unlock the layers just like that so they are active or inactive depending on whether they're locked or not and you can also make them visible or invisible with the little eye icon on the palette on the right the white arrow is the direct selection tool and i can use that to select individual anchor points on a shape those are those little blue boxes at the corners and then i can use the arrow keys on my keyboard to move those up and down or back and forth right or left and every time i click it's moving a scale inch on a separate layer up in the left hand corner i've created a handy little graphic to remind me of actual sizes relative to the scale sizes let's just zoom in on that using a command plus quarter inch equals 12 inches of course in h in o scale 1 8 of an inch equals 6 inches 1 16 equals three inches one thirty second equals one point five inches and all the way down to one sixty fourth which equals uh three quarters of an inch which is about as small as ever going to get on one of these now let's go ahead and build a door for goldie's place i'm going to use the rectangle tool and create a rectangle which is a scale 36 inches wide by 80 inches tall and i'm just using the direct selection tool and the arrow keys on my keyboard once again to adjust the size one inch at a time there we go now i want to put a window in the door so i'm going to use the rectangle tool again and put another one right over the top of the first one and adjust it so it's about four inches in from each side and three scale feet from the bottom of the door now i want to select both the top rectangle and the bottom rectangle by holding down the shift key go over here to the pathfinder menu and click on the minus front tool and that will create the opening for the window in our door the prototype door also has five decorative circles cut into the front of it so i'm going to create one using the ellipse tool and then i'll use copy and paste in front to create the remaining circles to properly center this feature i need to adjust my grid down to the half inch level so i'll change that to 24 and then i can just nudge that over using the arrow keys with the circle still selected i'll hold down the shift key to select the door also and once again use the minus front tool to turn those circles into openings in the door now we'll use the same techniques again to create some openings for panels in the bottom half of the door so what i'm creating here is basically a two layer door it'll be a sandwich of two layers of 25 laser board one on top of the other so i'm going to copy and paste and then i would like to make this a different shade of gray just so i can tell at a glance which layer is which then i can use the direct selection tool to pick an anchor point and hit delete to remove these circles and these openings because i won't need them on the back half of the door and then i want to make the interior window opening about an inch smaller all the way around so just direct selection on those anchor points and nudge them in one inch with the arrow keys on my keyboard and then i can stack them virtually to see what my door is going to look like now we can use the rectangle tool once again to create some outlines to represent panels in the door that will be scribed by the laser cutter the window in the prototype door has some nice victorian detailing it has four square panes of glass at the bottom and four small square panes of glass at the top so i'll just use the rectangle tool to make some one inch wide mullions for these little panes of glass both vertical and horizontal and then we'll get those into position and then i can select these individual pieces and go over here to the right to the pathfinder panel and click on merge and they all become one shape then since the mullions at the top of the window are exactly the same as the ones at the bottom i can do a copy paste in front and then transform rotate 180 degrees and then i've got those and i can just use the arrow keys to move them up to the top of the window now since i want the mullions and the rear panel of the door to all be one piece that'll all be cut as one piece i'll select all three of those and then once again use the merge tool over on the pathfinder panel to put them all together one thing to remember is that when you use the merge tool it automatically brings everything to the front so you can go up to object arrange send to back to get everything back where you need it to be well now we've got our two part door and i can select everything then go up to object group and use my arrow keys to position the door on the front of the building where it belongs all of the windows for the structure were designed in just the same way using basic shapes and the merge tool and the minus front tool to create the three different layers of the window there's the smaller rear window frame that can be positioned up or down the main window frame and of course the window casing to go over the other two and this is probably a good time to talk about checking your work in outline mode just go up to view click outline and then you can see the design the way the laser sees it just basic outlines this makes it easy to check for any stray paths or anchor points that can cause problems with the laser later on now we're going to skip ahead a little bit using copy paste in front to duplicate the window and then the minus front tool to create appropriately sized openings for the doors and windows in the walls of the structure as you can see i like to use different shades on the grayscale to represent different layers and materials when designing a structure in this case the lightest shade of gray represents the 1 16 inch thick basswood i'll be using for the exterior walls for the trim i'll likely be using o scale 1 by basswood lumber and i'll represent that with a darker shade of gray these pieces probably won't be cut on the laser but i need to add them to the drawing to know the relative positions of the other parts i duplicated the downstairs windows and their openings to create the upstairs windows and then hid everything but the main wall using the layers panel then i could use the line tool and copy and paste to create the scribe lines that will represent tongue and groove siding when engraved by the laser back on the layer i created for the trim i used the appropriate shade of gray to represent scale lumber and finished drawing the elaborate cornice using basic geometric shapes i also took the time to draw up some rather elaborate victorian corbels and these will be cut from three layers of 32 thousandths of an inch thick brown laser board i found a good straight straight-on photo of the front of the building and used the freehand pen tool to trace the lettering and then it was time to start laying out the rest of the walls using all of the same techniques that i'd used on the front i used a copy of the front wall to create the back wall reduced it to a single window and then determined the peak and pitch of the roof the left side wall has an exterior staircase which i imported from a previous design and then used to determine the final position of the upstairs side door i added some more 1 by trim then used the line tool once again to create scribe lines representing 12 inch wide boards for board and batten siding then it was time to start thinking in three dimensions i used the rectangle tool to create tabs and slots where the walls would fit together making sure that they were a scale 3 inches or 1 16 of an inch deep to accommodate the 1 16 of an inch thick basswood that the parts would be cut from i used copies of the exact same shape to create both the tabs and the slots using the merge tool to add tabs to the side walls and the minus front tool to create slots in the front and rear walls this ensures a near perfect fit when the parts are laser cut and assembled together i also use the minus front tool to create slots in the side walls for the o scale 2x6 rafters creating a single shape then duplicating it on 24 inch centers at the top of each wall by now the design was much bigger than my original 8 and a half by 11 art board but that's no problem it's easy to go into file document setup and then adjust the size of your artboard as you go and with the addition of the fourth wall the design was now complete and i can start thinking about breaking it all down for cutting on the laser ideally i like to create a new file for each group of parts that are to be cut from the same material roughly basing the size of the art board on the actual size of the material available in this case a 4 by 18 inch piece of 1 16 inch thick basswood now we really see where dividing things up into layers begins to pay off hiding every layer but the basswood walls i copy the parts to be cut from the working file and paste them into the new cut file making sure that they are oriented properly with the wood grain of the material to be cut obviously different laser cutters are going to have different software and their drivers will have different needs but it's still pretty much widely accepted practice to designate etched lines as rgb red and cut lines as rgb blue and even though i prepare my own files and do most of my own cutting i still like to follow this practice so the first thing i do is remove any internal colors or grays from when the shapes were created in the working file and then designate the etch and cut lines with red and blue respectively the final step before sending the file to the cutting software is to reduce the line weight from 0.25 to a nearly invisible 0.001 not every laser requires you to do this but it's still good practice this may seem like a no-brainer but i also like to save the cut file with a file name that tells me exactly what it is and what material it should be cut from my machine is a flux beambox pro and like any other laser you have to calibrate the height of the material table relative to the cutting head this is done by placing the material to be cut on the table and flipping down the plexiglas guide on the cutting head then raising or lowering the table with the adjustment knob until the guide makes contact with the material then flip it back up and you're ready to cut opening up the beam studio software that communicates with the laser cutter i use the built-in camera feature to get a snapshot of the material to be cut from a laser's eye view then clicking on the picture icon at left i can find and import the cut file i just created in illustrator beam studio will then ask if i want to import the file as a single layer or break it down into different layers based on color i choose the latter since there are both engraving and cutting layers on this job next i select all of the layers and use the arrow keys on my keyboard to nudge the cut file into position above the material going over to the layers panel on the right i choose the correct preset for each layer and the material to be cut these presets don't come with the software but were created by me through trial and error each has an ideal power setting for cutting or engraving the material selected in this software the job will start with whichever color layer is on top before moving on to the next layer i've found it's a really good idea to start with the engraving layer first and do the cutting last so i always make sure the layers are stacked properly to accomplish this when you're ready to cut just click the white arrow icon at top right and the software will analyze the file to calculate the most efficient tool path and give you an estimated time for completion if everything looks good press start and then it's off to the laser for fire safety never leave the laser unattended while it's working and to protect your eyes don't look directly at the beam while it's cutting going back to our working file in illustrator we can now start laying out the windows and doors to be cut from some 25 thou brown laser board since all of the windows are identical i only need to copy and paste one of them into the new cut file then i can break that window down into its three components and duplicate those for as many parts as the structure needs just as before i eliminate any interior fill colors and designate the cut lines as rgb blue on smaller parts like this it's a very good idea to gang cut them as part of a larger sheet leaving small tabs about 1 32nd of an inch connecting them to the backing i accomplished this by using the pen tool to add extra anchor points along the cut lines and then deleting them leaving a small gap to act as the connecting tab once all of the parts are set up this way they can be copied and pasted to create all of the parts needed the different layers for the doors are laid out in just the same way taking care to minimize wasted space as much as possible on the material to be cut the final step is adding an outline for the backing sheet grouping all of the pieces together in this particular case i like to make that outline black so the cutting software will read it as a different layer and then i can arrange it to be cut last once again we use the photo preview in beam studio to correctly position our cut file on the material and arrange the color-coded engrave and cut layers so that the machine will process them in the proper order then a quick check of the power and time settings and it's off to the laser again and that's it now i have the parts i need to get started on another structure and the basic groundwork is done for a possible future kit that fits together just like that laser cutters have been a game changer in the model railroading hobby and i hope you've enjoyed this quick tutorial on how i create my designs for laser assisted scratch building and for model kits i'll finish putting goldies together in an upcoming episode of the calico boomtown series so keep an eye out for that but until then thanks for watching everybody keep moving forward and patios for now [Music] you

Channel: ThunderMesaStudio

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Length: 23min 14sec (1394 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 02 2021