ALPS Advanced Laser Processing Software

Outline Review

Tools ▸ Outline Review · ■ Blue · select an outline first

What it does

It walks you around a traced outline at high zoom, stopping at checkpoints, and asks you to confirm or correct where the edge really is.

Why it exists — and what it is actually for

An auto-trace is about 90% right, and you cannot tell which 10% is wrong.

That sentence is the whole tool. The failure that proved it: a pair of pliers traced with the handles and body looking perfect, while the contour bulged out into blank sheet at one end — a "rhino horn" — and clipped the jaw tip. Nothing about the overall shape looked suspicious. You would have cut it.

⭐ So this does not primarily make the outline more accurate. It makes it KNOWN. At the end, somebody has looked at every part of that edge and put their name on it. A traced outline nobody reviewed is a proposal; a reviewed one is a measurement.

Step by step

  1. Select the outline in the Job Editor. (If nothing is selected the panel says Select an outline first.)
  2. Open Tools ▸ Outline Review.
  3. Plan the walk — this decides where the checkpoints go and in what order.
  4. Work through them. At each stop, click the closest point on the actual part edge.
  5. Finish. The reviewed path replaces the original.

The two things on the panel worth understanding

Worst first — visits the checkpoints most likely to be wrong before the rest. ⭐ Use it. If you run out of time or patience, you will have spent it where it mattered rather than on the easy straights.

Corner — check the point is sharp appears when a checkpoint lands on a corner.

⛔ Do not click the tip of a corner. It is the one place the trace is least reliable and your eye is least accurate — the apex is often rounded in the photo, blown out by glare, or simply absent. The correct technique is to define the two edges that meet there and let their intersection be the corner. Clicking the apex directly is how a sharp corner ends up a few thou inside the part.

Re-trace from photo — the part most people miss

⭐ When a bed photo sits under the outline, your clicks are anchors, not corrections.

Re-trace from photo re-measures the entire perimeter against the image, pinned to whatever checkpoints you have confirmed so far. So a handful of confirmed points improves the whole outline, including the stretches you never visited.

This is measurably better than nudging nodes one at a time: moving individual nodes plateaus, while anchoring and re-tracing keeps converging. If there is a photo under the outline, use it.

What accuracy to expect

1–2 thou wherever the edge is actually visible in the photo.

⚠ Read that condition literally. Where the edge is hidden — under glare, in shadow, against a same-coloured background, or beneath an overhanging feature — no amount of reviewing recovers it, because the information is not in the picture. If a stretch of edge cannot be seen, re-shoot it with better light rather than clicking where you believe it should be.