Shape Match

Tools ▸ Shape Match · ■ Blue · needs a bed photo

What it does

You tell it roughly what shape your parts are. It finds them in a photo of the bed and puts your artwork onto them — every one of them, in one go.

Why you'd want it

This is the tool for the job that pays: a box of identical blanks — keyrings, tags, coasters, badges — tipped onto the bed and engraved where they landed.

⭐ The alternative is placing each one by hand, and that is where the time goes on a repeat job. Shape Match measures where the parts are instead, so they do not have to be anywhere in particular.

Step by step

Scatter the parts on the bed. They do not need to be aligned or evenly spaced.
Capture a bed photo. (Until you do, the panel says No bed photo yet.)
Open Tools ▸ Shape Match.
Shape kind — Rectangle, ellipse, or any.
Give it the proportions — either From doc object (point at a shape already in your job) or Manual entry (type the dimensions).
Polarity — Object darker than bed or Object lighter than bed. See below.
Artwork to place — Select an object… from your job.
Run the detection and check what it found before committing.

Polarity is the setting that decides whether it works

It is asking one question: in the photo, are your parts darker or lighter than what is behind them?

⚠ Get this wrong and it finds nothing, or finds the gaps between the parts instead of the parts. It is the first thing to check when detection fails, ahead of everything else.

⭐ And it is worth arranging deliberately rather than accepting: dark anodised tags on a white sheet, or light acrylic on the dark bed. Contrast you created is contrast you can rely on next time.

Getting a clean detection

Parts must not touch. Two touching blanks merge into one shape that matches neither.
Consistent lighting across the bed. A bright patch at one end changes what "darker" means.
Say the proportions accurately. The match is on shape, so a 2:1 tag described as square will not be found.

⚠ Check the count before you send. If you put down 24 parts and it found 22, engraving now puts artwork on 22 and leaves two blank — which you will not notice until you are sorting the output.

Orientation

Where the shape has no meaningful orientation — a circle, a square — the panel says No meaningful orientation — artwork placed unrotated, and that is exactly what happens. For a part where rotation matters, use a shape that actually has a long axis, or place it with Registration Wizard instead.

Registration Wizard (registration-wizard.md) — one part, measured precisely, rather than many found approximately.
Fixture Maker (fixture-maker.md) — if the same parts recur constantly, a physical jig removes the photograph step entirely.
Variable Data — when each found part needs different artwork.