Rhino 8 print discards settings for laser cutting

Rhino Rhino for Windows
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1

Hello, all!

I’ve been using Rhino for laser cutting since Rhino 5, but it looks like the changes made to printing in Rhino 8 might have had an unexpected effect on our laser cutting workflow.

For reference, I’ll be using Epilog Fusion M2 lasers here since that’s what we have in our makerspace. I can print to these lasers from other programs like Illustrator, and I could print to them from Rhino 7 and everything works fine. This is an issue for the Epilog lasers I’m using here because our lasers require all of your settings to be done in the print preferences, and not on the machine or another program, just like a normal paper printer. I could send these files to our Trotec lasers and they’d be fine because even if the settings are discarded, I can set them again in an intermediary program.

When I go to print, all of the settings in the main print menu work

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Next, I select the print Properties to set my Vector settings, which I would expect to apply to the rectangle curve on the outside, and settings for my Raster settings, which I would expect to apply to the hatch in the center.

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However, when I check and see what settings have actually been sent, all of my values have been reset to the default of 50. I could change other settings like engrave direction and they’ll be reset to whatever the default values are before they’re sent to the laser.

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I’m speculating that Rhino 8’s discarding any settings set in the printer preferences instead of passing them on to the printer.

This could potentially be replicated without a laser cutter by installing the Epilog laser drivers and Epilog Job Manager, which is an intermediary program that you can send print jobs to and then send those jobs on to Epilog laser cutters, which are located here Fusion Driver and Firmware Updates, and then viewing the settings that were passed on to Job Manager. My sample file is the same as above.
laser settings test.3dm (43.7 KB)

Thanks for any insight y’all can provide! Luckily for us, this isn’t too impactful for our usual workflow, but it did derail some of our Rhino workshops.

_SystemInfo.txt (2.4 KB)

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Hi Kevin - unfortunately, as far as I can see, installing the drivers wants a compatible printer - no luck here so far. I’ll need to ask some larger brains.
OK, got it now.
@scottd - can you help with this?

-Pascal

4

Kevin - I was able to get this setup The epilog driver can be a bit finicky on interpreting our output. Most of it is controlled by output color not line width. And then combining that with hatch patterns can also throw it off a bit.

I suspect our print output has changed slightly to throw off the epilog driver.

I will see if we need to update the guide at all too: Using Rhino with Epilog Laser Cutters [McNeel Wiki]

5

Do you have a rhino 7 files that acts correctly and then acts differently in Rhino 8?

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It’s been a while since I tried this file in Rhino 7, but last I recall it laser cut great on the Epilogs, and it worked with and without color mapping settings to the specific color. When I get back to my work computer early next week I can see if I have any other examples, but thanks for taking a look at this!
Rhino Jewelry.3dm (160.2 KB)

I guess it is worth noting that with my tests, any vectors with the default hairline print width would cut as vectors, and any hatches would cut as engraves, which is what I expected.That means it wasn’t like the line widths were getting read as lines for engraving. Within the Epilog driver, as long as color mapping isn’t turned on, it should ignore the actual color of the lines and hatches as well. Next week I’ll double check if color mapping works with Rhino 8, or if it’s treating it as if color mapping wasn’t checked which is the default.

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Yes, the hariline defaults is critical in some cases. There are some real unintended consequences between lines and hatches that can kick the epilog in and out of raster.

So lines are vectors and Solid hatches specifically are engraves. Other hatches that are clearly lines should stay vector? (I seem to remember that we output solid hatches as close together diagnal hatch)

I am interest in your testing results vs what you expect. I found the Epilog unique in its logic in this case.

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Thanks for your patience! I found a file that I had originally make in Rhino 7 and tried sending it to the laser in Rhino 7 and Rhino 8.

Tape Dispenser Wings (1) was sent from Rhino 7, and you can see that the Vector Cutting settings went through with the 8% Speed, 100% Power, 10% Freq

Tape Dispenser Wings was sent from Rhino 8 and while I had set the settings to the same values, they reset to the default settings. I did double check that by default Rhino 8 was printing lines using hairline as the line width default and it was.

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And to your point about hatches that are lines and not solid fills, those print as individual vector lines, but the solid fills are recognized as raster engraves which is intended.

I’m not exactly sure how print settings are packaged with the file when it sends files to printers, but this does reinforce that Rhino 7 was sending these settings while Rhino 8 might not be, at least when it comes to using the Epilog print drivers.

Tape Dispenser Wings.3dm (131.1 KB)

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Working on recreating the Rhino 7 setup. Once I can recreate what is working correctly in Rhino 7, we can figure out exactly why 8 is not working.

When sending the Rhino 7 file, what print settings are being used. Mainly in the Lineweight area?

Also, how is the Vector cutting speed set in the Rhino 7 case? Is it Color?

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With the Epilog print driver I’m using, it’s mostly lineweight yeah. I could choose to assign settings based on color but in these test cases I haven’t been, so it should only be looking at the line weight (to tell if a curve should be vector cut or raster engraved if it has a thick stroke) or if it’s an object like text or a hatch which will only be raster engraved. I’ll go ahead and add a screenshot of what that menu looks like, although I usually leave it disabled unless I’m working with a more complicated operation.

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The Speed and Power are set in the printer Properties which is where this screen comes from, and I can set the settings that all raster engraves should use and all vector cuts should use.

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I went back and ran some cuts to make sure I got all the settings, I’ll just list them out below. These use the Windows Rhino 7 print dialog.

Output Type: Vector Output
Output Color: Display Color
View and Output Scale: Extents, 1:1
Margins are all 0
Position is not centered, with an offset of 0 from the Upper Left
Linetype: Match Pattern Definition
Line Width Scale by 1
Default Line Width: Hairline mm

I think the settings past this aren’t as relevant to the error but for the sake of completeness:
Non-Scaling Point Objects: 0.5mm
Non-Scaling Arrowhead Size: 2.0mm
Text Dot Font Size: 10pt
Visibility: Only locked objects checked
Text: Notes none, Filename none

Importantly, I’m using this specific print driver for my tests.
Printer Details: Epilog Engraver WinX64 Fusion
Scale X: 1
Scale y: 1

Thanks again for looking into this, Scott! It’s definitely interesting seeing how Epilog handles Rhino outputs compared to other print drivers, and I appreciate your help!

11

Hi Kevin,

I’d like to get you on a newer service release or internal build of Rhino. Have you tried SR5 or something build of the day related yet?

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Can confirm that the Epilog is mainly interpreting line weight as the determinant for Cut vs. Raster. (I believe that by default saturation is mapped to raster strength, seem to recall playing with gradients to modulate raster depth)

We’ve got an Epilog Fusion 60 at the office, and I almost exclusively drive it from Illustrator, (where we apply a line value of 0.001 to cut paths ensure doesn’t flip raster). Am down for running any tests there that might be helpful to this cause, am only running Rhino 7 now, (considering upgrading soon) and could cart my machine over to the laser station to verify against another install.

There are a couple of workflows possible with the Epilog - one of which uses the Laser Properties dialog, and the other only the Job Manager (which gives a more stripped down set of options/variables), we’ve had folks prefer one or the other - and as I recall there were some differences reported…

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That’s the same workflow we usually use here, Illustrator at 0.0001 and Laser Properties. We don’t run Job Manager but yeah that would be a good workaround in the case of using Rhino 8, it just doesn’t work for our makerspace unfortunately. It’s good to know that someone has a similar setup, especially for testing!

14

Hi, I’m jumping in on this conversation because I’ve had the exact same issue as Kevin in my Fabrication Lab at University of Arkansas on a 2016 Epilog Fusion M2 40. I’ve been asking students to save files created in R8 as R7 format, and to open Rhino 7 when using the Epilog for now.

I just downloaded the latest Service Release Candidate (8.5) today and that does not fix the issues.
I’m using Epilog Engraver as the printer, and ‘Custom’ as the material size. In Rhino 7 choosing ‘custom’ allows the media size set in the Epilog Properties panel to determine the material dimensions in the print driver. In R8 this function does not work.

Also, as Kevin reported, my Speed, Power, and Frequency settings don’t translate to the machine. It sends the vectors, but with incorrect scaling, media, and speed / power / frequency settings (it appears to just use the defaults)

FWIW Adobe Illustrator has issues too, but McNeel is MUCH better about working with customers on support. Thanks

15

Experiencing the same issues with Epilog from R8 vs R7. @Trav has there been any movement on this?

16

Hi @Mitchell_Ransome, there’s been a lot of recent print changes and bug fixes. Have you tried the latest Rhino 8 SR6 or the SR7 release candidate?

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Hello! I just tried the latest release candidate 8.7.24101.10001 and the print settings were still being discarded

18

Hi, I’ll jump in on this as well. I’m having the same problem “printing” to an Epilog M2 Fusion from Rhino 8-SR7. Any movement on this issue? Right now I’m having to dumb down R8 output to R5 and print from there. Though I use Rhino for lots of other things, I probably wouldn’t have dropped the quatloos on the “upgrade” had I known this would be a problem.
K

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Thanks for the reports. I’ve made another YT for this topic so we can make sure we get it working. I was hoping all of the SR6 and SR7 changes resolved this but apparently there’s still some physical printers losing their settings. RH-81693

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Thanks - I’m still asking everyone to use Rhino 7 for our Fusion M2 for now.
I’m happy to try out each new SR Candidate for R8 with our machine.

Things will certainly get easier once this is resolved :slight_smile:

21

Any idea if this has been given any attention? Having to dumb down R8 to R5 to print is less than ideal.