Adobe Illustrator for Laser Cutting: Complete Guide

Illustrator vs Free Alternatives

Illustrator handles complex files with many objects reliably, has the best Image Trace output quality, and the Pathfinder operations are rock-solid. The main downside: the Creative Cloud subscription cost. If you already have it, it is an excellent laser prep tool.

Document Setup

File → New: set units to Millimeters, artboard size to your laser bed or material dimensions.

Preferences → Units → General: set to mm. Turn on rulers (Ctrl+R) and verify units.

The Pen Tool

Press P. Click for corner anchor points, click-drag for smooth curve points. Alt-click an anchor after a curve to break the handles for a sharp corner on the next segment.

For simple logos and shapes: manually tracing with the Pen tool is often faster and produces cleaner paths than Image Trace. Target 5-20 nodes per simple shape instead of hundreds from auto-trace.

Image Trace

Window → Image Trace. Place your raster image (File → Place), select it.

Best Presets for Laser Work

Black and White Logo: clean high-contrast logos become cut outlines. Best starting point for cut paths.

Technical Drawing: engineering-style line art and schematics.

Line Art: hand-drawn sketches and loose artwork.

Key Controls

• Threshold: black/white cutoff. Adjust while watching preview.
• Paths: edge following accuracy. Higher = more nodes, more accurate.
• Corners: sharpness of corner detection.
• Noise: minimum area to include. Increase to filter out noise spots.
• Ignore White: prevents background from being traced as a filled shape. Always enable this.

Click Expand to convert to actual editable paths. Then Object → Path → Simplify to reduce node count.

Pathfinder Panel (Shift+Ctrl+F9)

Unite: merges overlapping shapes into one. Good for joining multiple elements into a single cut outline.

Minus Front: subtracts the front object from the back. For holes: draw hole shape on top, select both, Minus Front.

Intersect: keeps only the overlapping area.

Divide: splits at all intersections. For tiling, puzzle patterns, and complex joineries.

Click Expand after Pathfinder operations to convert to regular editable paths.

Preparing for Export

Convert text to outlines: Type → Create Outlines (Shift+Ctrl+O). Embeds letter shapes as paths.

Outline strokes: Object → Path → Outline Stroke. Converts stroke width to a filled shape. Important if the stroke represents a specific width channel.

Organize layers: put engrave fills and cut paths on separate named layers for clean import into laser software.

Exporting

SVG: File → Export → Export As → SVG. In SVG Options: SVG 1.1, Presentation Attributes, uncheck Include Slices and XMP.

DXF: File → Export → Export As → AutoCAD Interchange File (.dxf). Use AC1014 (R14) format for broadest compatibility.

PDF: File → Save As → PDF. LightBurn imports PDF reliably.

After import into LightBurn, always verify dimensions by clicking a known-size object and checking its width/height.