Section 5 · Artwork

Getting a design into ALPS, and into a state the laser can use.

5.1 Importing

File ▸ Import artwork… (Ctrl+I).

⭐ Bring vectors in as vectors. A logo imported as a PNG can only ever be engraved as a picture of itself — it cannot be cut, and its edges are as sharp as the pixels it arrived with. The same logo as SVG or PDF cuts cleanly at any size. When a customer sends a JPEG of their logo, ask for the vector before you do anything else; it saves more time than any setting.

⚠ Check the size on arrival. Different programs disagree about how big a drawing is, so an import can land at the wrong scale. Look at the dimensions before you place it, not after you have arranged the sheet.

5.2 Drawing

ALPS draws rectangles, ellipses, polygons and lines — enough for the shapes that surround imported artwork: a border, a cut outline, a hole, a jig pocket.

⚠ It is not a replacement for a drawing program. If you already work in CorelDRAW or Illustrator, keep doing that and bring the result in — or print straight to ALPS through the virtual printer (Section 7.6).

5.3 Text

Type it, choose a font, position it.

⭐ Convert Text to Path before sending a job you will run again, or before a file leaves your computer. Text stays live text — which is convenient right up to the moment the machine, or the colleague, does not have that font, and the layout silently reflows. Convert to Path turns the letters into shapes that cannot change.

⚠ Convert a copy, or convert last. Once converted it is no longer editable as text.

Put Text on Path runs text along a curve — for a circular badge, a curved tag, or around a plate. Take Text off Path puts it back.

Installed a font while ALPS was running? Type ▸ Refresh Fonts re-scans your installed fonts — the picker lists the new font, and text measures and converts from the new file. No restart needed. If the font still doesn't appear, it didn't land in the system font folder — on Windows, right-click the font file and choose Install for all users.

Paragraph text. Turn Paragraph on (the ¶ control, or the Paragraph roll-up) and the text WRAPS to its box like a Corel paragraph frame — resize the box and the lines reflow. The Paragraph roll-up then offers the frame's layout controls, all in your working units:

The indents and paragraph spacing need Paragraph on — for a single artistic line there is no frame to indent into, so the fields are greyed out. What you see wrapping on the canvas is exactly what burns: one layout engine feeds the canvas, the Layout sheet, the simulator and the machine.

5.4 Arranging

Align and Distribute (left, centre, right, top, middle, bottom) live in the Object menu.

Group (Ctrl+G) and Ungroup (Ctrl+U) keep a design together while you move it.

⭐ Break Apart (Ctrl+K) is the one to know. An imported logo often arrives as a single compound object, and you cannot colour part of it — which means you cannot make part of it cut and part of it engrave. Break Apart splits it. This is the answer to a large share of "why did it all come out as one setting?"

Array repeats an object on a grid; Radial array repeats it around a circle.

Merge combines overlapping shapes.

5.5 Tracing an image

Image trace turns a raster into vectors — so a logo that only exists as a PNG can be cut.

⭐ On the Tools screen under In the Job Editor, or from the wrench in the editor's tool strip (Section 3.3). Same tool either way.

⚠ A trace is a best guess, and it is only as good as the picture. Clean black-and-white line art traces well. A photograph, a low-resolution logo, or anything with soft edges gives a ragged outline with far more points than it needs.

⭐ Always prefer the real vector file. Tracing is what you do when the customer genuinely cannot find it — not the first thing you reach for.

For a physical part rather than an image, see Part Digitizer ■ — and read what its result is worth before relying on it.

5.6 Photographs

Photographs are not artwork you can send straight to the laser: every shade has to become a pattern of dots first. See Image Prep.

5.7 Colour is the last step, and the important one

Once the artwork is arranged, give each operation its own colour — one for engraving, another for cutting, another for scoring.

⭐ ALPS builds one process per distinct colour, so this is not decoration: it is how you tell the machine what to do. See Your first job and Section 6.

⚠ Two colours that look alike are still two processes, and two shapes you meant to differ that share a colour are one. If a process list has more or fewer rows than you expected, the artwork's colours are the place to look.

Next: Section 6 · Setting up a job

Bending text into a shape

(Object ▸ Envelope — Arch, Bulge, Pinch, Perspective, Wave.)

Select some text or artwork and bend it. This is the carved-sign look: the letters themselves stretch to fill a shape, taller in the middle of an arch, narrower at the far end of a perspective.

⚠ This is not the same as text on a path. Text on a path places letters along a curve and each letter keeps its own shape. An envelope squeezes the whole word into a shape and distorts the letters to fill it. If you want your letters upright and following a curve, use text on a path.

⛔ It converts your text to paths. The wording is no longer editable afterwards, so keep a copy of the text object if it might change. That is deliberate — the editor cannot show you a bent live text object, and a design that looks flat on screen and cuts bent is worse than one that asks you to convert first.

Select several words together and they bend as one piece, so a whole line arcs consistently instead of each word curving on its own.