Every control

The left pane groups the controls by when they matter, and that grouping is the important part. Two headings split it. Before you build is read by Build Scene and nothing else — change any of it and rebuild, which costs nothing because the depth map is kept and re-cut. After it is built repaints the preview on the spot and never reaches a cutting file.

A smaller group inside the first is stricter still: a few settings are written into the brief the image model is given, so changing them after the picture exists re-cuts a picture composed for the old value. The studio flags that with a depth map made for other settings · regenerate badge along the bottom bar. It is a suggestion, not a refusal.

Scene: written into the brief

• Layers — how many sheets, 3 to 10, default 6. It picks the ladder of greys the model is asked for and the number of depth classes the picture is cut into. More sheets is more depth and more cutting; a scene with three real distances asked to fill eight sheets produces a few near-empty ones, and the check will say so.
• Picture — Rectangle – portrait (tall), Rectangle – landscape (wide) or Square. Default landscape. The shape of the picture the model draws, written into the brief, and the one choice here that changes the price: a square picture is one price and a rectangle, tall or wide, is another, and the panel shows both. Changing it afterwards marks the depth map as made for other settings. The picture always comes back as a rectangle or a square; the shape of the finished piece is its border, chosen afterwards.
• Fit — Edge to edge or Whole design, nothing cut off. Default is the first, and it is what a landscape wants: the scene reaches every edge and every part of the picture is on one sheet or another. Told to fill the frame with a mandala, the model does exactly that, and the mandala comes back cut off on all four sides. Whole design asks for the design complete, inside the picture with a margin all round, seen straight on. Its sheets are placed where the design puts them rather than by height in the frame, as a landscape's are — a mandala, a wreath, a medallion, a single object. The mandala and floral templates choose it for you, with the Outline border. A design drawn whole gives the Outline and Circle borders a design to follow; a picture filled edge to edge suits the Frame, and its outline is the rectangle. Choose it before you generate: it is written into the brief, and changing it afterwards marks the depth map as made for other settings.
• Around the design — Plain, Matching ornament or Patterned border. Shown only for a whole design. It is asked for before the border is chosen, so the Outline border cuts it away again, and a Circle keeps only what lies inside it. A round design in a rectangle leaves space in the corners, and this is what the brief asks the model to put there. Plain leaves it as backdrop. Matching ornament fills it with ornament in the design's own style — corner filigree, scrollwork, lace — cut like the rest, so no corner is empty. Patterned border asks for a patterned band round the inside of the frame with the design complete inside it. Like the fit, it is written into the brief: choose it before you generate, since changing it afterwards marks the depth map as made for other settings.
• Detail — how much cut-out work the brief asks for inside each depth. Default medium. Simple is bold shapes, a handful of large openings, and names no examples at all. Medium gives every depth a few clear ones and Detailed asks for the whole papercut lightbox, which is the slowest to cut. Which openings they name comes from your scene, not from a fixed list: a wood gets daylight between the branches and gaps between the trunks, a village gets rows of lit windows and porch railings, a cafe gets the gap under a table and the spaces along a shelf. Only Simple asks the model to hold back.
• Focal subject — the thing that must stay recognisable. Left empty it is read from the prompt. It stays with the scene, so when a prompt changes subject, check it: the brief asks the image model for the focal subject whether or not the prompt mentions it, and the panel warns you in amber when it names something the prompt does not. A new scene starts with it empty.

Art direction: read the brief before you spend on it

Under the scene fields is a collapsible Art direction panel, and it is worth opening at least once. It holds the exact brief the image model will be sent — the whole thing, refreshed as you type, with a copy button beside it. It is the same panel Stepped Layers has, and it does the same job: you can read what you are about to spend a credit on, and you can paste it into a chat window and ask something else to draw it.

The brief names, plane by plane, what belongs at each distance — and those example elements come from the sort of scene you described. A coffee shop is given a counter, shelves and a doorway; a hillside is given grass, a tree line and hills; a scene the studio does not recognise is given none, and is told to find its own openings instead of being handed somebody else's landscape.

A building named by a scene set inside it is read as where you are, not as what to draw: in “a farmhouse kitchen” the subject is the kitchen, and the brief asks for a kitchen rather than for a farmhouse with a porch on it. Outdoors the same word is the subject as usual — “a farmhouse in a wheat field” gets a farmhouse, with rows of lit windows and porch railings. If you want the building itself, describe it from outside, or put it in the Focal subject field, which always wins.

Nothing else in the studio tells you as much about why a picture came back the way it did. If a generation disappoints, read the brief first: usually the plan put your subject at a depth you did not expect, and the fix is the focal subject field rather than another generation. The plan behind it — every depth with its role and what is protected — is a table in the Plan tab on the right once a scene is built; see Sheets and the stack.

Saying what you do not want

A prompt can refuse things, and the refusal is read: “a halloween house on a hill, no fence”, “a quiet lake, no boats or people”, “a village at dusk, without animals”. Anything refused is taken out of the brief and then listed at the end of it, among the things the image model is told not to draw — you can see both in the Art direction panel. It is also kept out of the scene plan, so a refused thing is never made the focal subject and never protected.

“no”, “not”, “without”, “excluding”, “omit” and “avoid” all work, and “or” continues a refusal — “no boats or people” refuses both. “and” ends one, deliberately: in “no fence and a big moon” the moon is something you asked for, and reading it as a second refusal would quietly delete it. To refuse two unrelated things, use “or” or a comma.

This is a change from earlier builds, which ignored the refusal and could act against it — the example openings in the brief were the same fixed list for every scene, fence posts included, and a noun in a prompt could be made the protected subject even when it was the thing being refused. The same fixed list was also why an indoor scene used to be asked for grass and a tree line; it is now chosen by what the prompt is about.

Build quality

Right under the scene, and open it before anything else when the sheets are not what you expected. Everything in this section changes what Build Scene cuts: the size and border of the piece, what each sheet keeps, what happens to a piece that floats or hides the subject, how closely the cut follows the picture, and the width of your beam. It says so at the top, and once any of it has changed since the sheets on screen were cut it says that too, with a Rebuild Scene button right there. Rebuilding costs nothing — the depth map is kept. The section header carries a mm / inch toggle that changes how every measurement in the pane is shown and typed.

It opens with the Finished size, because that matters as much as anything under it: every threshold here is in millimetres, so the same picture cut larger keeps more fine detail. Then the border and frame, which set the outline every sheet is cut to. Earlier builds had both in sections of their own further down the pane; they are the same settings, and a scene keeps its values.

Finished size

• Finished size — the finished width, 50 to 900 mm, default 300. Four preset buttons sit beside it for the common beds: 203 mm (8 inches), 279 mm (the Glowforge bed width), 400 mm and 600 mm. The height follows the picture’s proportions and the border: a Circle is this wide and this tall, and with the Outline the piece can be shorter and narrower than the picture, and this width is the most it can be. This is the setting to reach for when the check complains about thin material or fine detail: the whole picture scales with it, and rebuilding at a new size is free.

Border & frame

The shape of the finished piece, the same on every sheet: it is what the stack lines up by. Chosen in Build quality, after the picture exists, because it never reaches the brief — changing it rebuilds for free and never needs a new depth map.

• Frame, the default — the picture plus the Frame width all round, so the frame is the same width on every side: a rectangle, or a square on a square picture. Up to 12 mm the frame is added round the picture, so at the default 7 mm the picture is a little larger than it was at the old default of 12. Wider than 12 mm the frame comes in over the picture's edge instead, so the picture keeps its size and a wide frame reaches in to meet a design drawn whole, joining it to the rim, rather than shrinking the design away from it.
• Circle — a round sheet whose diameter is the Finished size. Round a design drawn whole (Fit on Whole design, nothing cut off, or a design on a plain page) the circle is the smallest one that holds all of it, with a strip of backdrop and then the frame outside that, so nothing of the design is cut off; where that circle reaches past a tall or wide picture, the backdrop is carried out to the rim — solid on the back sheet, open on the sheets in front — so the design sits on its backdrop all the way round, and the notes in the Debug tab say so. A small piece standing well apart from the design can fall outside that circle and be left out of the piece; the build notes say that too. Over a picture drawn edge to edge it is the largest circle inside the picture, so its corners, and the ends of a tall or wide picture, are cut away. As with the Frame, a Frame width past 12 mm widens the ring inward over the backdrop and the design rather than shrinking them.
• Outline — what Stepped Layers' Outline border does: the edge is traced round everything in front of the backdrop — the skyline of a landscape, the outer ring of a mandala, a roofline against the sky — smoothed into a shape rather than a fringe of twigs, and pushed out by a strip of backdrop and then the Frame width, with rounded corners. The sky above the skyline is cut away, a round design gets a round frame with a band of backing board showing between the design and the rim, and the finished size becomes the piece rather than the picture, so its height is only known once the scene is built. Three rules keep it looking designed: a notch of sky between two parts of the design that both reach the top is a bite, not a shape, and the edge stays straight across it; a small piece floating on its own — a bird, a star, anything less than twice the Frame width across — is left out of the piece; and a large piece far from the rest — a moon high over a ridge — is joined to it by a bar of frame. The build notes at the foot of the Debug tab say when any of them happened, and the README.txt in the ZIP repeats them. A picture drawn edge to edge fills its frame to the corners, and its outline is the rectangle, said plainly in the same notes. For a piece shaped like the design, generate the picture with Fit on Whole design, nothing cut off, or bring your own design drawn on a plain page: the page is read as the backdrop and the edge follows the design — see A page round the design.
• Frame width — the solid rim every sheet shares, 3 to 40 mm, default 7 (12 before version 1.2; a scene you saved keeps the width it was saved with, and a template keeps the one it was made with). 3 mm is the narrowest frame in both studios. It is what registers the stack and what every silhouette is held by. Under the Frame and the Circle, a width past 12 mm comes in over the edge of the picture rather than making the picture smaller: the design stays the size it is at 12 mm and the frame meets it. Under the Outline the rim is outside the design by definition, so a wider one leaves less of the Finished size for the design, as before. It is also why every sheet has a full outer rectangle even when its scenery is a wisp across the middle — unless the border is the Outline, when the rim is this wide all the way round the design's own outline instead, and everything inside the edge that is not design is frame. A frame too wide for the sheet is refused, with the numbers.
• Canvas margin — blank sheet outside the frame, default 0.
• Keep the page round the design — off by default. See A page round the design.

A scene saved with the old Square sheet opens with the Frame, which on a square picture is the same thing. On a tall or wide picture the square sheet sat the picture in a solid mat — 69 mm down each side of a 300 mm tall scene — and the Frame does not. A scene saved with the old Round sheet is built with the new Circle rule the next time it is built.

A page round the design

A design drawn whole on a plain page — a papercut on white paper, a skull in a wreath of flowers on a white background — stands on a page that is not part of it. White is nearest in a depth map, so read by its grey the page would be the nearest depth of all: the front sheet a board with the design set into it, and the Outline following the page's rectangle instead of the design.

So the page is read as the backdrop instead. A page is one flat grey that runs right round the edge of the picture — along at least nine tenths of it, and at least half of every side — and in to the design; everything of that grey connected to the edge is the page. It becomes the back sheet, solid, and the sheets in front open onto it where it shows: the design stands in front of it rather than being sunk into a board, the Outline follows the design, and the Circle holds the whole design. The page takes the backdrop's place in the stack, so the design itself is cut at one depth fewer than Layers — five depths of design and the page on six sheets; ask for one more sheet to keep six. The notes above the build in the Debug tab say when this happened, how much of the picture the page was, and repeat both of these choices.

A picture drawn to its edges — sky along the top, ground along the bottom — never has one grey all round, and is read exactly as before; so is a dark page, which is the farthest depth already.

• Keep the page round the design — on, the page is cut as drawn: by its grey, nearest of all, a board in front with the design set into it, as before. Off by default. Changing it rebuilds for free; the depth map is kept.
• Reverse the depth order — on, the depth map is read the other way round: black nearest, white farthest. Off by default. For a build that came out back to front, such as a map painted black-near; see Which way round the picture is read. Changing it rebuilds for free; the depth map is kept.

What each sheet keeps

• Min feature size — default 0.5 mm. A loose piece smaller than this — one attached to nothing else on its sheet — is absorbed into the openings around it rather than cut, and the size decides which floating pieces count as significant enough to report. Parts joined to the rest of the sheet are never removed by it. It is measured as an area, the size squared — 0.25 mm² at the default, so only specks go; at 3 mm it is 9 mm², and a separate piece 2 mm by 4 mm goes, and so does a dot 3 mm across, which is about 7 mm². If small separate parts you wanted are missing from the sheets, such as teeth, dots or stars, lower it and rebuild, which costs nothing. Under the field it says the limit in the unit on screen, as an area and as a square, and after a build the Debug tab says under each sheet how many loose pieces it dropped and, when any was big enough to be something drawn, the area of the largest.
• Min bridge width — default 0.1 mm. The most consequential number here. It is the threshold behind thin_material and fine_detail, and it is what the repair widens a load-bearing neck up to. At the default nothing is widened and nothing is flagged, so every line is cut as drawn - though a stem Add bridges puts in is still at least 1.5 mm wide; if strands snap or burn through, raise it to what your material holds - about 1.5 to 2 mm in 3 mm ply - and rebuild.
• Min cutout width — default 1.2 mm. An opening narrower than this all the way along is closed rather than cut: the laser cannot clear it. An opening wide enough somewhere keeps all of its corners.

Loose and hidden pieces

• Loose pieces — what happens to a piece attached to nothing. Cut loose, the default, cuts it free and reports it, and you glue it in place at assembly; Add bridges gives an island with ground beneath it a stem down to it, and anything still loose the smallest tab the material holds; Cut away takes it out of its sheet, so there is nothing loose to place, and it falls back to the first sheet behind where it is joined to the frame - sometimes the backdrop. Cut loose is usually right here, because the sheet behind holds the piece — see Loose pieces. Once it has put bridges in, you can take any of them back out one at a time. Open the Vector view, choose the sheet, and every stem and tab the build added has a blue marker; the bar above says how many. Click one and it turns grey and dashed, and the stack goes stale; press Rebuild Scene and that sheet is cut without it, its piece left loose and reported like any other. Click a grey one to put it back, or put back N removed to restore every removal on that sheet. The studio stays on the same sheet in the Vector view through the rebuild, so you can go on removing. Where two markers overlap, zoom in to pick the one you mean — each click removes one bridge. A removal belongs to that sheet and that spot, so it holds through rebuilds; if a new picture or new settings move the bridges, a removal that no longer matches anything is simply ignored.
• Trim sheets that hide the focal subject — off by default. On, the nearest offending sheet is eroded inside the subject’s outline, by the least that lifts the subject back over its floor, and measured again, at most three times.

How the cut follows the picture

• Simplify tolerance — 0 to 0.5 mm, default 0, which keeps every traced point. How far the exported outline may sit from the traced one. Higher is fewer nodes and a slightly looser shape.
• Fit cubic Béziers — on by default. Off, every outline is exported as straight segments, which is a much larger file and visibly faceted on curves. There is rarely a reason to turn it off.
• Exact circles and rectangles — on by default. A window traced from a raster comes back as a thirty-sided shape a pixel or two out of square; this snaps it to the rectangle it was drawn as. It only ever looks at small openings, never at the silhouette, so a ridge line or a stand of trees is never straightened into something it is not.

Your laser

• Kerf — default 0.15 mm, and Apply kerf compensation, off by default, which offsets every cut path by half the kerf. See Your material for what to measure and when compensation is worth turning on.

Material

Recorded, not cut: none of these changes a cut path.

• Material — free text, default “1/4in Luan plywood”. It is written into the export README so a file found months later says what it was cut for.
• Sheet thickness — default 6.35 mm. Only the 3D preview reads it; it does not change a cut path.
• Sheet gap — air between sheets if you use spacers, 0 to 25 mm, default 3. Recorded with the scene and written into the export README for your own notes. It does not change any cutting file, and at the moment nothing on screen reads it either — the exploded and 3D previews use their own fixed spacing. The studio does not make spacers, or any other part for a shadow box or lightbox: the only parts it cuts are the sheets.

Finish: changes nothing that is cut

Preview finish switches between Wood (simulated plywood, backdrop darkest) and Paint (a colour per sheet). Under Paint there are seven preset ramps — Walnut, Ocean, Forest, Sunset, Monochrome, Copper and Ice — and under those, one swatch per sheet that takes any colour at all. Reverse flips the order back to front and Match wood puts the wood ramp into the swatches as a starting point.

Finish saves itself as you change it, never marks the stack stale and never reaches a cutting file. It has its own page: Colour, preview and saving a scene.

Questions