Use Vector Selection Order to Carve Objects
How to carve your toolpaths in a order that you choose by using the "Use Vector Selection Order" option. This lesson applies to Vectric VCarve, Aspire, and Cut2D.
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Video Transcript:
Hello everyone in this lesson, we're gonna learn how to carve objects in the exact order that you want to carve them in. And for this lesson, we're actually gonna be looking at some of these signs that I used to make.,And this was one of my very first big commission jobs with a CNC machine. So as you can see, I used to take these blanks of just regular pine wood and I would cut them up and paint them.
And then I would, uh, load them up in the machine., Just like this. And then I would carve all of these words into them and I would actually wholesale these to a supplier. And I did thousands of these every year. So I got really good at how to batch these together and how to cut them efficiently. And you can see I've done tons of these, and these are only held in by pressure and it's just, uh, blocks of wood around it, just to wedge in there.
And there's no other hold downs holding the material down. So that was my preferred method for holding the material in place. It was real, simple and easy to set up. But one thing I noticed when I was cutting, these is this is what I'd want to end up with, but sometimes it would cut randomly like this and it would start some words, then jump over here, start some more words and jump over here and jump all over the place carving words, randomly all over the job.
And there's no real issue with that, but sometimes you may want to do it in a more organized fashion that makes more sense to you, and you can also get it to speed up by cutting it in a nice, organized fashion, rather than jumping all over the place. So let's go back to Vectric, and you can see for this, we have just simple text and a little star there.
These are all individual groups and we have a simple VCarve toolpath carving all of these together. And if we go to preview this, I'm gonna reset. When you're previewing the speed is generally all the way up. So when I click preview the toolpaths, they're gonna go real fast and you may not notice how disorganized it is and you'll see the final product and you'll say, oh, it looks good.
And you go to carve, and then that's when you notice it's carving all over the place. So if you reset the preview and then just turn the speed dial down a little bit, and preview that again. You'll start to see it'll cut the first one. Then it starts to jump around and now it's going all disorganized.
And this is exactly the way it would cut on your machine. So this will give you a good preview when you slow it down, how it'll actually cut. And then we can speed that back up to preview the whole thing. Okay, so if we go to our toolpath settings by double clicking on that, VCarve toolpath, you can see it's just a simple VCarve toolpath with a 90 degree V-Bit, and this toolpath will cut randomly, wherever it thinks is the most efficient, but it may not actually be the most efficient looking at it logically.
So you can change the order that your objects are cut by simply checking this box down here, where it says use Vectric selection, order, check that box. And now, whatever order you select your vectors, that's the order that it'll carve your objects. So once you do that, it's a good idea to deselect everything and then select the exact order that you want to carve these.
So you could start at the lower left click that object, and you could group these together to make them easier to select, and then hold shift, select the next group of objects, and then just keep holding shift and then go in the exact order that you want to carve. So you could see I'm going, uh, left to right, then up, then, right to left then up and left to, right.
So you can kind of get it in a nice, organized fashion. Also, if you're clicking these and let's say you accidentally selected the wrong order, you have to deselect to go back to the one you want to select and then keep selecting forward. Whatever order these are selected in will be the exact order that they carve.
So now you see, I just selected those in a nice organized fashion. And then I click calculate and now that's gonna recalculate the order that they're being carved. So now if we click reset preview, and then we can slow this down again and click preview selected. Now it's gonna carve the exact order that we selected.
Speed that up a little. And there you go, now it's gonna go left to right. And then go up and then go right to left and then go up and then left to, right. So it's gonna carve whatever order you want. And you could even go further and ungroup the letters and everything. And you can select the exact order that the letters are getting are being carved, but that will take a little bit longer to select everything, but you can see just by doing it this way, it looks much more organized, and much more logical.
All right. So that would end up with the same exact results, except you're just carving in a different order. And I will show you there's another way you can do that without having to select each one of those individually. And that's by using the array copy tool. So I'm gonna delete all these except for one.
And I actually have another layer here for the size of the wood. So I'm gonna delete all that, except for the very first lower left one. And then if we go back to our design tab and we're gonna go to the array copy tool, I'm gonna select the entire piece down here. And you can set how many rows, how many columns you want and the gap or offset you want in between them and make sure it's ungrouped so they're all separate and then click copy.
And you'll notice when you do that, everything is automatically selected right now. So now it's selected in the exact order that we'd want to carve, now click close. And I'm just gonna hide the blank layer, that's why it's important to put those on separate layers.
And then go back to our toolpaths and then I'm gonna go and create a brand new VCarve toolpath and I'm gonna make sure the vectorselection order is selected and just click calculate, and I'm gonna reset the preview and you'll see the second toolpath we didn't select them all individual. We just used that array copy function.
And now when we preview this, I'm gonna slow it down. This will carve in the order that we want it. So it's gonna start from the lower left and zigzag gets way up to the top. And that's the way I would do it because it takes a lot less time to select all the objects. And there you go you end up with exactly what you wanted.
So, this is the way I did the signs with copying the vectors. That way, if any of these signs were messed up, I can go back and carve just one of those in the batch. You could also use the array, copy toolpath for this. And that would simplify it as well, because you only need to make one toolpath and then you array copy that toolpath for how many rows and columns you want.
The only downside of doing it that way is if one of these signs was messed. You cannot go back and individually edit that one sign. Whereas with the vectors, you can go and select which everyone was messed up, create a new toolpath for just that one. And you can fix that one while it's still loaded on the machine.
So that's the only reason I did it this way, but the array copy toolpath would also work if you wanted to do it that way. And also to mention, we just looked at the VCarve toolpath. But if you go to the profile toolpath and you wanna make sure you check this option to show advanced toolpath options. And then at the very bottom, you're gonna see a tab that says order, click on that.
And this one has even more options and you can select multiple options at the same time. So you can let this software determine the order by going left to right, bottom to top, in a grid pattern or shortest path. Or you can deselect all of those and click Vectric selection order. And that would be that method I just showed you by selecting each object in the order that you want it to carve.
So the profile toolpath gives you a few more options and then the other toolpaths also have options where you can use vector selection order. So it's usually just this little checkbox at the bottom of the tool. All right.
That's all for this lesson. If those tips helped you out, make sure you like and subscribe for more.
And then I would, uh, load them up in the machine., Just like this. And then I would carve all of these words into them and I would actually wholesale these to a supplier. And I did thousands of these every year. So I got really good at how to batch these together and how to cut them efficiently. And you can see I've done tons of these, and these are only held in by pressure and it's just, uh, blocks of wood around it, just to wedge in there.
And there's no other hold downs holding the material down. So that was my preferred method for holding the material in place. It was real, simple and easy to set up. But one thing I noticed when I was cutting, these is this is what I'd want to end up with, but sometimes it would cut randomly like this and it would start some words, then jump over here, start some more words and jump over here and jump all over the place carving words, randomly all over the job.
And there's no real issue with that, but sometimes you may want to do it in a more organized fashion that makes more sense to you, and you can also get it to speed up by cutting it in a nice, organized fashion, rather than jumping all over the place. So let's go back to Vectric, and you can see for this, we have just simple text and a little star there.
These are all individual groups and we have a simple VCarve toolpath carving all of these together. And if we go to preview this, I'm gonna reset. When you're previewing the speed is generally all the way up. So when I click preview the toolpaths, they're gonna go real fast and you may not notice how disorganized it is and you'll see the final product and you'll say, oh, it looks good.
And you go to carve, and then that's when you notice it's carving all over the place. So if you reset the preview and then just turn the speed dial down a little bit, and preview that again. You'll start to see it'll cut the first one. Then it starts to jump around and now it's going all disorganized.
And this is exactly the way it would cut on your machine. So this will give you a good preview when you slow it down, how it'll actually cut. And then we can speed that back up to preview the whole thing. Okay, so if we go to our toolpath settings by double clicking on that, VCarve toolpath, you can see it's just a simple VCarve toolpath with a 90 degree V-Bit, and this toolpath will cut randomly, wherever it thinks is the most efficient, but it may not actually be the most efficient looking at it logically.
So you can change the order that your objects are cut by simply checking this box down here, where it says use Vectric selection, order, check that box. And now, whatever order you select your vectors, that's the order that it'll carve your objects. So once you do that, it's a good idea to deselect everything and then select the exact order that you want to carve these.
So you could start at the lower left click that object, and you could group these together to make them easier to select, and then hold shift, select the next group of objects, and then just keep holding shift and then go in the exact order that you want to carve. So you could see I'm going, uh, left to right, then up, then, right to left then up and left to, right.
So you can kind of get it in a nice, organized fashion. Also, if you're clicking these and let's say you accidentally selected the wrong order, you have to deselect to go back to the one you want to select and then keep selecting forward. Whatever order these are selected in will be the exact order that they carve.
So now you see, I just selected those in a nice organized fashion. And then I click calculate and now that's gonna recalculate the order that they're being carved. So now if we click reset preview, and then we can slow this down again and click preview selected. Now it's gonna carve the exact order that we selected.
Speed that up a little. And there you go, now it's gonna go left to right. And then go up and then go right to left and then go up and then left to, right. So it's gonna carve whatever order you want. And you could even go further and ungroup the letters and everything. And you can select the exact order that the letters are getting are being carved, but that will take a little bit longer to select everything, but you can see just by doing it this way, it looks much more organized, and much more logical.
All right. So that would end up with the same exact results, except you're just carving in a different order. And I will show you there's another way you can do that without having to select each one of those individually. And that's by using the array copy tool. So I'm gonna delete all these except for one.
And I actually have another layer here for the size of the wood. So I'm gonna delete all that, except for the very first lower left one. And then if we go back to our design tab and we're gonna go to the array copy tool, I'm gonna select the entire piece down here. And you can set how many rows, how many columns you want and the gap or offset you want in between them and make sure it's ungrouped so they're all separate and then click copy.
And you'll notice when you do that, everything is automatically selected right now. So now it's selected in the exact order that we'd want to carve, now click close. And I'm just gonna hide the blank layer, that's why it's important to put those on separate layers.
And then go back to our toolpaths and then I'm gonna go and create a brand new VCarve toolpath and I'm gonna make sure the vectorselection order is selected and just click calculate, and I'm gonna reset the preview and you'll see the second toolpath we didn't select them all individual. We just used that array copy function.
And now when we preview this, I'm gonna slow it down. This will carve in the order that we want it. So it's gonna start from the lower left and zigzag gets way up to the top. And that's the way I would do it because it takes a lot less time to select all the objects. And there you go you end up with exactly what you wanted.
So, this is the way I did the signs with copying the vectors. That way, if any of these signs were messed up, I can go back and carve just one of those in the batch. You could also use the array, copy toolpath for this. And that would simplify it as well, because you only need to make one toolpath and then you array copy that toolpath for how many rows and columns you want.
The only downside of doing it that way is if one of these signs was messed. You cannot go back and individually edit that one sign. Whereas with the vectors, you can go and select which everyone was messed up, create a new toolpath for just that one. And you can fix that one while it's still loaded on the machine.
So that's the only reason I did it this way, but the array copy toolpath would also work if you wanted to do it that way. And also to mention, we just looked at the VCarve toolpath. But if you go to the profile toolpath and you wanna make sure you check this option to show advanced toolpath options. And then at the very bottom, you're gonna see a tab that says order, click on that.
And this one has even more options and you can select multiple options at the same time. So you can let this software determine the order by going left to right, bottom to top, in a grid pattern or shortest path. Or you can deselect all of those and click Vectric selection order. And that would be that method I just showed you by selecting each object in the order that you want it to carve.
So the profile toolpath gives you a few more options and then the other toolpaths also have options where you can use vector selection order. So it's usually just this little checkbox at the bottom of the tool. All right.
That's all for this lesson. If those tips helped you out, make sure you like and subscribe for more.
