In this video, I'm going to show you how you can create
sequential serial numbers in Lightburn.
Hi, my name is Gil and today I'm going to explore the variable
text tools in Lightburn. Using the tools, we're going to create
a project that will add sequential serial numbers into
your project, allowing you to run multiple jobs and get each
part marked with a unique number. If you are creating
objects that need a serial number, this is the fastest way
you can get results in Lightburn. And before we jump
into Lightburn, let me invite you to hit that subscribe button
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projects and tutorials based around the software. And I'd
love it if you join us for the laser live streams we host on
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with lasers. The link to the group is in the description
below. And I look forward to seeing what you create with your
laser.
Okay, let's jump into Lightburn so I can show you this new and
powerful tool. Okay, so we're back in lightburn. And I'm going
to show you what I consider an advanced feature. And something
that's been requested a number of times on email and through
the Facebook group is to look into how to do serial numbers in
Lightburn. Now one of the things that's great about Lightburn is
it actually gives you this feature built in. So I want to
go through some of the basics. And there are many options in
using variable text in Lightburn, you can use it in a
wide array of formats. For this video, we're just going to look
at an introduction level. So we're going to look at
progressive numbers or serial numbers. That changed depending
on how many copies you have or how many jobs you're going to
do, we are going to come back and look at some of the more
advanced stuff using spreadsheets using dates in a
future video. But right now, we're going to look at the
fundamentals on how to set this up within Lightburn.
So there's a couple of things that I want to introduce you to,
first of all, the way variable text works is using the text
tool. So what's coming over here, create an edit text. So
I'm going to say, let's clone me. So my name is Gil P, right.
So Gil P. And I'm going to put in a number here. Now normally,
if I wanted to do this, I'd go up one,
move the text out to the corner, I can then grab my array. And I
can go cool Gil P 2 I'm going to just move that a little bit,
cross Thank you give me 3. And I would then have to come in, I
could Well, I have the settings from other settings, see if I
can fix this up. I need some spacing here. Thank you. So I
can
have as many of these as I want. But I would have to manually go
in here and just go. Alright, get my text tool again.
Number
3, I mean, this is just manual tedium, especially if you've got
1000s of numbers that you want to do five, you can see I
already made mistakes. So let's not do it this way.
I'm going to get rid of the array, when it come back to the
text, I wish I had multiple means I'd actually get things
done. And with the variable text option, you have certain codes
that you can use that allow you to change the text, or the
numbers in this case, as you actually do your job. So when it
comes to variable numbers, you have a number of different
options that you can use. We're going to stay in the decimal
value. That's ones twos, threes, fours and fives. And to actually
put a number in here, using the text tool, you can actually use
the lowercase d if a decimal, and we're going to use two
numbers here, so about two days. Now, you can actually also use a
hexadecimal value. I'm thinking you would use that for maybe
software as in like software, serial keys, maybe going to use
it for registering machines, maybe it's a machine serial
number. Personally, I don't use hexadecimal. But that options
there. And in that case, you can actually use haitch lowercase,
which again is hexadecimal. So you've got the decimal, you've
got a hexadecimal generally you can't mix them up. So we're
going to work with the decimal system here. And I'm just going
to show you how this works very quickly. We grab that text, I'm
going to bring it into the corner and we're going to go
back to our ray tool. I'm gonna bring him across. We're going to
also go up the page or the work area. See if I can get it. Can I
get another one or no, I can't. That's okay.
So we've got all these guilties let's start building some
clones. Now, one of the things that I
didn't do so I'm going to undo it, I'm going to do it here is
I'm going to go up in this area, I'm going to change this to
serial numbers, there's a drop down here to your numbers is
what I want, I want to clone all of them as serial numbers. So
again, let's go back to the array.
And again, I'm showing you this because it's the first time
you're doing it, if you miss that step, you'll go Gil, I
didn't get the results. What's going on, we now have if we go
and click on any of these, you can see the serial number is
there. And what's also interesting is
we go here, you can see the offset number is zero, I go to
the next one, the offset number is one, we go here, offset is
two and you can see that it is going to place a value where the
lowercase Ds are, if I go up to the last one,
it says 47. So we've been able to get 47 options on this page.
So that's the first part that I'm incredibly happy about.
There's also a window that's tied into this. And if we go
into Window and go to variable texts, a little option comes up
here. And this also allows us to put in any values that we want.
So in this case, we want to start at zero, just great, we
want to end well we've only got, we've got 50. So let's put in
50, we want to end with 50. That's the job that we're doing.
You have multiple options with doing this job, if you want to
put in new material. So we're going to cut I think it's 47 on
this page. But we really want to, we want to finish 100 of
these. So we can actually do this job and repeated a number
of times until we get to the end of 100. We're going to start
with number one, because that's Gil one, that's me, I'm hoping
Gil 48 can actually do the editing of this video, we'll see
what happens.
And we can actually test it. So if I hold down test, you can see
that there are a whole bunch of numbers that start and in fact
that very, that very first one started at zero, I don't want to
do that. Let's go to let's go to number one, let's see if we can
do that. Let's see the test works. There we go. So now at
the bottom, you can actually see that number one is there, then
it goes to 234-567-8910 all the way up to 48. We've been able to
do that with the variable text, we've told it what to do, we can
also auto advance it to the next job. So I'm going to do that.
And if we said the job is a pretty cool option. To check it.
As I was saying, I'm actually holding down that test button in
the variable text window that allows me a quick preview to see
if everything's going well. Or I can actually go to the preview
itself, I can actually run this job. So we have now a whole
bunch of different numbers that are coming up.
When I come back to the work area, you can see instantly
jumps back to the expression. And in this case, we're using
decimal, we can actually change those numbers too. So let me
just quickly delete all of those that say we want to start at a
different number. So I'm going to put it in here with my text
option a another D in here, and I am going to start at one, but
I'm going to start the job at 48.
Let's clone or let's use the array to get some things going
here.
And we'll get some rows going. So pull that page up eautiful.
We're looking good. Let's test it now. And you can see that it
did not start at 48, which is interesting. That's because the
current should have been 48. That's the error I made, go to
48 picks it up. So in this case, because the job hasn't finished,
we can actually define where it goes, I started 48, you've also
got to tell that current number, you can actually change that
maybe you've made a few cuts with that have come up, the
numbers are usable, but they come back and you can see 53 is
exactly where that low one picks up the one that's highlighted
right now. So you have quite a little bit of ability to change
those options. Let's take a look at this actually in a job.
Because I think that's really important. It's great to learn a
new technique, but unless you apply it to a project, it can
get a little messy here.
So let's go to a new
job. We're not going to save this. And in fact, I'm going to
bring up a design that I've already been playing with.
So this is a plot to a fictitious project that I've
been working on. This is the ultimo laser cutter and engraver
brought to you by laser ologists Incorporated. This is our
special Kickstarter edition. We've been very lucky. We kick
started this project. We were very successful. And we are
making these plots up. You've got a little bit more
information down below the made in Australia is the URL to the
website. But we have a serial number here. So let's go
To play with the serial number, and like we were doing before,
we want to, I want to make sure we're doing this in the right
line. So let's go and select what it is we're doing here. And
then I'm going to actually bring that up, and we're going to put
in, we're gonna put in three numbers. Perfect. In this case,
I also want to select that layer. And I want to make sure
that that layer
is selected correctly. So up here, I am actually going to
choose the option, we will come back and deal with date and time
merging and also a cut settings in a future video. And in this
case, we're going to change that to serial number. So we now have
everything set up. And if we go back into the variable number,
you can see here that it's going to start at one we can test that
is a number number one.
Because this is actually a serial number, I want to make
sure that it looks uniform. I also like the idea of showing
how many numbers on the clock, because let's say we may 500.
And you're getting number one, it's sometimes it's nice, as
opposed to just having one single digit like that, number
one, I want to show that there are other numbers, there are
other models being created. So what I'm going to do here is I'm
going to actually grab the text and I'm actually going to put a
zero here, I'm going to show you what's what happens. If I test
it. Now you can see that it says 001. So that zero that tells
LifeVantage, despite all the numbers when we go through the
variable text, so I think that looks a little bit more, I think
professional for me. And especially in a serial number,
it's kind of nice, if you've got the 001 model you are, I guess
blessed, or you're gonna have some problems when bugs turn up,
I'm not too sure. But again, it's a very professional look.
So we've got that set up. What I like to do at this point is
select everything.
And I'm going to group it all. Let's group it all into one
thing.
It's my group, I can now select it all I'm going to make it a
little smaller, we get into the corner, and guess what we're
going to do, I'm going to do the same thing that I did last time,
I'm going to use the array, let's see how many we can get
across. Well, that looks good. We're also going to move it all
the way up.
I think we get off too far. And let's hit that test. And you can
see all the numbers are in place, it probably doesn't you
probably can't see directly. So I'm just going to zoom in a bit.
Let's get some of those images in here. And there you go, you
can see the 1314 1819 2324 and the zeros there in front of
them. So that we've got a professional looking serial
number, sequential number, using the variable text in a very,
very short time. That's awesome. In this case, with the cuts and
build layers, I've actually designed this so that it will
fill all the text because one of the things that I can actually
do with this, that's actually not what I wanted to do. Because
what have I done here, hang on a second, there's there's a fill
there, and there shouldn't be a fill, that should be a line,
excuse me, it went back to some defaults. So I'm pretty sure
there we go. So if we take a look here, what I'm actually
done is use the lines. And then we haven't actually used any
fields, I can buy material that has a very thin color on the top
and a separate color underneath to the laser when it's actually
going and engraving this as a line engrave, it will actually
reveal it's a black and maybe a red surface or blue surface or
green surface. That produces a very, very good result. So I'm
setting this job up with that outcome in mind. More
importantly, I love the fact that all of this will just take
an hour, we can do this job, we can send it straight to a laser
hit start, it's not connected to my laser right now. So we're not
going to do that. But let's assume that we've done this job
it's come out correctly. By hitting that auto advance that's
right here. The next time we run the job, the job will start at
32 It'll be 31. In this case, just to simulate it, I'm going
to change that start place to 31. And we'll do that as well.
And then you can see at the bottom, that we have 31 coming
up and it's going all the way to 60 that's in the top right hand
corner. You won't need to do that. As long as you've got that
auto advanced. All you'd need to do is put a new piece of
material into your laser and run the job. And that my friends is
a really fast way to get a real professional job done incredibly
quickly using variable text option. I look forward to coming
back and showing you other options including using a
spreadsheet. So instead of making a
Serial Number plot like we have here, you can make personalized
name tags. And you can have the person's first name, surname,
maybe a employee number, our whole mix of options that you
can set up directly in Lightburn. Okay, now you can set
up your projects with unique numbers generated within
Lightburn. Any way you look at it, it's a faster way to
complete your job. If you'd like this tutorial, feel free to
check out some of these laser tutorials right here, and I'll
see you for the next video and go make something amazing