Illustrator For Lasering

Some topics to cover include:

• Adapting/editing existing designs quickly
• Hotkeys
• Precision placement/scaling/sizing of cuts/holes/joints - essential, especially if working in 3 dimensions/fitting things together.
• Parametric boxes
• Project boxes
• Living hinges
• Wood hinges
• Gluing acrylic
• Vector hatch fills (faster than raster cutting, looks better too) http://www.cuddleburrito.com/blog/2014/6/16/vector-path-crosshatching-in-illustrator-to-speed-up-laser-cutting
• Finding/using vector graphics
• Etching using the rotary tool (and compensating for distortion if it's not a cylinder)
• Kickass joins (good for CNC routers too) http://makezine.com/2012/04/13/cnc-panel-joinery-notebook/
• efficiently using the pathfinding tools — not so basic as it turns out
• joins, compound paths, and clipping masks — again, not so basic as it turns out
• locating stray points and paths that can cause the machine to re-trace certain lines, which can ruin some of the work I do — tedious and non-intuitive
• using the alignment tools re: relative placement of the cutting head and generally — sometimes overlooked
• accurately setting the machine's absolute origin to desired tolerances — advanced
• using jigs for repetitive procedures (I set it to ~.005-.010 so people get cuts against the rulers rather than the machine leaving whatever raw edges were on the piece, if that makes sense) — advanced
• rubber stamp mode for stamps, dies, and simple engraving (fences and mirroring) — medium advanced
• color mode — advanced — requires some knowledge of PS threshold, posterization, or color separation strategies.
• Photoshop strategies for cleaning up raster images to get good results with the Illustrator image trace tools, and image trace cleanup/path smoothing/pathfinding. I do this a lot for preparing images for silk screen printing.