Zooming, Panning, and Selection

When working on a design in the LightBurn Edit Window, it's essential to effectively zoom, pan, and select portions of your design. These functions allow you to focus on specific areas and make precise adjustments to your artwork. In this guide, we’ll explore the best practices for zooming, panning, and selecting objects in LightBurn, including tips and shortcuts to speed up your workflow.

Zooming in LightBurn: Quickly Focus on Details

Zooming in LightBurn allows you to get a closer view of specific parts of your design. Here's how you can zoom in and out:

• Mouse Wheel: Scroll the mouse wheel to zoom in or out. The zoom will center around your mouse pointer, making it easy to focus on a particular area of the design.
• Touchpad Zoom: On most touchpads, use a two-finger swipe up or down to zoom in or out.
• Keyboard Shortcuts: Use the + and - keys on your keyboard to zoom in and out of the workspace.

Zooming is an essential tool for working with intricate designs or small details.

Panning in LightBurn: Moving the Workspace View

To pan or move around your workspace in LightBurn:

• Middle Mouse Button: Press and hold the middle mouse button and drag the mouse to move the view. This is the most common panning method.
• Spacebar Shortcut: If you don't have a middle mouse button, press and hold the Spacebar on your keyboard. This will change your cursor to a hand icon (PanCursor), allowing you to drag the workspace with the left mouse button.

Both methods help you navigate through larger designs or when you need to access different parts of your workspace.

Toolbar Functions for Zoom and Pan

You can also control zoom and pan from the Main Toolbar:

• Pan Tool: Click the button with four arrows to enter Pan mode. This allows you to drag the view around with the mouse. The Spacebar also acts as a shortcut for this function.
• Zoom to Page: Clicking the Zoom to Page button resets the view, framing the entire work area. This is the default view when LightBurn opens.
• Zoom In and Zoom Out: These buttons zoom in and out from the center of the workspace.
• Frame Selection: This button zooms the view to focus on any currently selected object. If nothing is selected, it will zoom to fit all the objects in your project.

Selecting Objects in LightBurn: How to Modify Your Design

In LightBurn, selecting objects is crucial for making changes. Here’s how to use the Selection Tool effectively:

1. Click to Select: Simply click on an object to select it. Once selected, the object will be highlighted with an animated pattern, and editing handles will appear for resizing, repositioning, skewing, or rotating the shape.
2. Selection Information: The Numeric Edits toolbar will show the size and position of the selected object. Other controls may also become active depending on what’s selected.

To clear the selection, click on an empty space or press the Esc key.

Advanced Selection Techniques: Select Multiple Objects

You can select multiple objects by dragging a rectangle around them:

• Left to Right: Dragging from left to right will display a red rectangle, selecting all objects fully contained within it.
• Right to Left: Dragging from right to left will display a green rectangle, selecting every object that the rectangle crosses.

Selection Modifiers: Enhance Your Workflow

LightBurn includes several selection modifier keys to improve your efficiency:

• Shift: Hold Shift while selecting to add new items to your current selection.
• Ctrl + Shift: Hold both Ctrl and Shift to remove the new selection from the current selection.
• Ctrl: Use Ctrl to toggle the selection state—deselecting selected objects or selecting unselected ones.
• Tab: Press Tab to cycle through selected objects in your workspace.
• Tab + Shift: Use Shift + Tab to cycle through selected objects in reverse order.

These shortcuts allow you to quickly and efficiently manage multiple selections in your design.

Additional Selection Tools in LightBurn

LightBurn offers several selection tools under the Edit menu for managing your objects:

• Select All: Selects all objects in your design.
• Invert Selection: Deselects selected objects and selects all unselected objects.
• Select Open Shapes: Selects all open shapes, which are those that do not form a closed loop.
• Select Open Shapes Set to Fill: Selects all open shapes set to a Fill or Offset Fill layer, which are typically not able to be filled.
• Select All Shapes in Current Layer: Selects all shapes in the active layer. Alternatively, hold Shift while clicking on a layer in the Cuts / Layers window to select all shapes within that layer.
• Select Contained Shapes: Selects all shapes contained within the currently selected object. This is useful when working with complex designs where you need to select everything inside a closed path.

Troubleshooting Selection Issues in LightBurn

If you experience unusual flashing or patterns when selecting an object, it could be due to overlapping geometry, which often occurs when files are imported multiple times or exported incorrectly from other design software.

To resolve this, you can:

• Use the Delete Duplicates tool under Edit → Delete Duplicates or use the shortcut Alt + D.
• Ungroup objects using Ctrl/Cmd + U to delete individual shapes if needed.

By understanding how to zoom, pan, and select objects in LightBurn, you can work more efficiently and streamline your design process.