I've just started with Laser Web on my iMac and have found it a

I’ve just started with Laser Web on my iMac and have found it a very steep learning curve.

What is the best way to import and engrave text

I need to engrave a 8pt font on wood

Regards
Bob

What are you using to create your file? Did you convert the text into path?

I am a real newbe to LaserWeb. I have Photoshop or Open Office I can use. How do I convert text to a path

Try inkscape. It is free.

@Bob_Gibson it has nothing to do with LW. You need to learn about Vectors. This are" images" you can stretch without pixelation plus a path that machine understand specially for cutting. I suggest you take a look at various videos on vectorizing or creating vectors in Inkscape ( free ) . This will be the to go tool for that unless you have illustrator which I like much better myself.

Yes - check out Inkscape. Use the text tool - and for my laser, I had to convert it to a Path. In Inkscape, select your text, choose the Object menu -> Convert Object to Path (Ctrl-Shift-C)

I’ve put a lot of details in my instructable, which I just posted to this group.

Let us know if you’re any closer or where you’re stuck.

@Ariel_Yahni_UniKpty Thanks Ariel will get studying today.
I also have a problem with my serial port disappearing randomly.
My set up is iMac (High Sierra) Laser Engraver controlled with Arduino Nano ATmega. Serial port worked perfectly then dissapeared while I was using it.

@Aaron_Cammarata OK thanks Aaron just downloaded it this morning.
Will get started with is as soon as I get my Serial Port back working.

@Bob_Gibson try a different USB cable. I haven’t had issues with my Mac

@Ariel_Yahni_UniKpty I dont think its the cable because the serial port is not visible in “System Report” under USB. When the driver is working correctly you can see here

I don’t think osx will show anything in system report if nothing it’s detected. There are many know cases of either cheap copy nano / uno boards or bad/cheap USB cables

@Bob_Gibson I’ve used Mac with Arduino/TinyG/Smoothie/ATTiny/
ESP8266 and any other microcontroller you could mention and one thing about Mac OS is the absolute rock-solid reliability of the serial interface, compared to Windows, for example.

Linux is the same, I’m no OS bigot…

If you are losing your serial it’s because of a potential few reasons - your USB I/f on your controller is faulty, your USB cable is faulty, you don’t have the correct driver.

On my Mac mini I have an 8-port USB3.0 hub and I can have a different microcontroller in each port and it never gets confused or loses a port.

If there’s no port visible on system report, it hasn’t detected one.

What’s in /dev/tty* ?

@Mike_Thornbury Thanks Mike I think its all sorted now. I restored my system from a date in Time Machine that was prior to installing the orginal FTDI driver.
When I restarted the iMac still couldnt find the USB device so I reinstalled the FTDI driver and everything has been working great ever since.