Parts Library
Tools ▸ Parts Library · any machine
What it does
It builds the fiddly, repetitive bits of a sign or a cut-and-build project from numbers instead of by hand — a row of nine fir trees at varying heights, a ridgeline with three peaks, an arched blank with its hanging holes already in the right place, and the tab-and-slot joints that decide whether the thing goes together.
You pick a part, set a handful of parameters, and press Insert part. What lands in your design is an ordinary path — you can move it, scale it, break it apart, put it on any process.
Why you'd want it
Two reasons, and the second one is the real one.
The first is even spacing. Nobody hand-places twelve shingle lines evenly, or nine trees at a believable variation of heights. That work is arithmetic, and doing it by dragging is slow and comes out slightly wrong.
⭐ The second is that a joint has to fit. A slot that takes a ¼" board is not ¼" wide, because the beam removes material from both sides of wherever you cut. A slot cut on its nominal line comes out a full beam width too wide, and the joint you press together falls apart. The Joints group works that out from your material thickness and your measured beam width, so the slot you cut is the slot you need.
⛔ Turn Kerf OFF for a joint
This is the one thing that will bite you.
The parts in the Joints group already have the beam width in their geometry. If you also switch on the cut process's Kerf setting, the correction happens twice and you are back to a sloppy joint — or worse, an impossible one.
The reason it cannot be left to the Kerf setting is worth understanding, because it applies to any part you draw yourself with both an outline and holes in it:
- Your part's outer edge wants to be cut outside the line, so the piece keeps its size.
- A slot or hole wants to be cut inside the line, so the opening keeps its size.
- Kerf applies one side to everything on the process. Whichever you choose, the other one goes wrong by a full beam width.
So for a job with slots in it, put the correction in the geometry — which is what this tool does — and leave Kerf set to off.
Step by step
- Open Tools ▸ Parts Library.
- Pick a part from the list on the left. They are grouped as Scenery, Sign shapes and Joints.
- Set the parameters. Every one is a real measurement in inches, and the preview updates as you type. The size shown at the bottom left is what will land in your design.
- For anything in Joints, set Material thickness and Beam width to your actual material. See below for how to get the beam width.
- Press Insert part. It drops in the middle of the bed and ALPS switches to the editor.
Your numbers are kept per part while the panel is open, so switching to another part and back does not lose the material thickness you just typed.
Getting your beam width
Beam width is how wide a slot your laser actually burns, and it depends on the material, the lens and the focus — it is not a number you can look up.
Measure it once per material: cut a square of a known size, measure the piece that falls out with calipers, and the difference between the drawing and the piece is your beam width. Tools ▸ Material Test is the easy way to cut the square at a setting you will actually use.
Typical values are 0.005"–0.015" on thin material. The default here is 0.008". If you have never measured it, the default gets you closer than ignoring it entirely, but a measured number is what makes a press fit work.
Clearance — how tight do you want it?
Clearance 0 is a press fit: it goes together with hand pressure and stays there. That is what you want for a display piece.
Add clearance if you are painting or finishing the parts before assembly, or
if the joint has to come apart again. 0.002"–0.004" is usually enough — the
finished joint opens by twice whatever you enter, because half of it comes off the
slot and half off the tab.
The parts
Scenery
| Part | What you set |
|---|---|
| Fir tree | Height, and how far the tip leans |
| Treeline | Width, tallest tree, how many, and how much the heights vary |
| Coastal conifer | Height, how far the leader droops, lean |
| Coastal treeline | Width, tallest tree, how many, height variation |
| Mountain ridge | Width, height, number of peaks |
| Snow cap | Width and drop — sits over a ridge summit |
| Plank / log courses | Panel size and how many courses — score lines, not cuts |
⭐ Which tree? Fir tree is the stiff, symmetric, upright cone everyone pictures — a spruce. Coastal conifer is a western hemlock or red cedar: narrower, with branch ends that turn down and a drooping leader, the top nodding over instead of standing straight.
⚠ But size decides which one to use. The drooping leader needs room: below about 1.5 in of tree it stops reading as a nodding top and starts reading as a squiggle, and a row of them looks like hooks rather than a treeline. Use the coastal shape for a large single tree or a bold treeline; in a small vignette the plain Fir tree silhouette is the better choice, because a tree that reads as a tree beats a tree that is botanically correct and illegible.
That is not a style preference, it is geography. If the sign is for anywhere on the BC coast — the Sea to Sky, the Island, the Sunshine Coast — the coastal shape is the tree that actually grows there, and the symmetric spruce is the one that does not. Nobody outside the region will notice. Everybody in it will.
Sign shapes
| Part | What you set |
|---|---|
| Arched sign blank | Width, height, how much crown, hanging hole size |
| Ribbon banner | Width, height, tail length |
| Hanging holes | Spacing and diameter — drop onto a board you already have |
Joints
| Part | What you set |
|---|---|
| Slot row (mortises) | Spread, number of slots, slot length, material thickness, beam width, clearance |
| Slot-together stand | Board width, foot depth, material thickness, beam width, clearance |
| Alignment pegs | Spread, how many, peg diameter, beam width, clearance, and whether to cut the pegs |
| Finger-joint edge | Edge length, number of fingers, material thickness, beam width, and whether you want the teeth or the sockets |
The Slot-together stand gives you both halves at once: a foot with two tenons, and the matching pair of slots to place on the board it stands up. Centre the slot pair on your board near its bottom edge, cut both, and push them together.
Alignment pegs are for a layered sign — a backer, an overlay, cut-out trees on top. Glue on its own lets the layers slide while it sets, and a millimetre of drift shows. Cut the hole pattern into every layer at the same place, drop a peg through, and the layers can only sit one way.
The two diameters are deliberately different, and that difference is the whole point: cut a hole and a peg on the same nominal line and neither fits, because the beam opens the hole by a full beam width while taking a full beam width off the peg — two beams of slop, and the peg rattles instead of registering. Set Cut the pegs too to off if you would rather use a bought dowel; a 1/8" dowel is cheaper and rounder than anything a laser makes. Cut your own when the layers have to be the same material.
⚠ The stand does not draw an outline of your board. A "reference" line would be cut into your material like everything else — so the slots come on their own, and you position them yourself.
Layered signs — marking where a raised piece goes
(Object ▸ Overlay Locator, in the Job Editor — not part of this tool, but it is what makes layered work assemble.)
If a piece is glued on top of a backer rather than slotted into it, the problem is not the cut, it is the glue-up: you have five seconds to place it before the glue grabs, and by eye you will be a millimetre out. So mark the backer.
Select the raised piece, then pick one of two marks:
| what it does | when | |
|---|---|---|
| Hidden outline | Scores a thin line just inside the piece's footprint | Most work. Cheap and fast. |
| Recessed pocket | Engraves a shallow recess a touch larger than the piece, so it drops in | When it must not slide at all, or the edge should be hidden |
⭐ The outline is deliberately tucked under the piece. A locator line drawn on the exact edge shows as a permanent halo wherever the glue-up lands a few thou off — and it always lands a few thou off. Hidden is the forgiving option.
⚠ The pocket is the one thing in this tool that is filled rather than outlined, because the solid engrave is the recess. Everywhere else a filled shape is an accidental solid burn.
Both are measured from the piece's finished edge, not the line you drew — a cut part is already about half a beam width smaller than its outline, and the mark accounts for that using the beam width on your cut process.
⚠ Regenerate the mark if you edit the piece. It is a snapshot, not a live link. Nudging the mark by hand is how the two stop agreeing.
Alignment pegs and locators solve different halves: a locator tells you where to put the piece, a peg stops it sliding while the glue sets. On a big flat overlay, use both.
Changing your mind later
An inserted part is a normal path, so scaling and editing it work as usual. But a part you scale is no longer sized for your material: stretching a joint by 20 % stretches the slot too, and it will not fit.
If a joint needs to change, come back to the tool, set the new numbers, insert a fresh one and delete the old. That takes about ten seconds and is the whole reason these are generated rather than shipped as clipart.
Related
- Material Test — how to get a real beam width for your material.
- Nesting — fitting several cut parts onto one sheet.
- Artwork — what happens to a path once it is in your design.