Cutting it out

1The Output/Export column

Everything for getting a wall out of BrickIT! is in the right-hand column, under Output/Export. It always works on the active panel, the one picked in the Layers list, unless a menu offers all panels. Click Output/Export ▶ at the top to fold the column away when you want more room for the preview.

1

Line Colours: the colours your laser software will see for cut and engraved lines.

2

Reveal Cuts: little cuts at the joints beside each opening.

3

Export SVG: the active panel as an SVG file.

4

Export STL (resin print) and its printer plate: for a 3D printer, covered in chapter 8.

5

Export DXF: the same drawing as a DXF, one panel or all of them.

6

Print 1:1: a full-size paper print, on as many pages as it needs.

7

Detail Layer (relief): the stone features as separate parts.

Between them sit the String Courses, Chimney Stacks and Corner Quoins cards from chapter 1. At the bottom of the column, a short summary gives the panel's size, its courses and bricks, and how many openings and string courses it has.

2Cut and engrave colours

Every line BrickIT! draws is one of two kinds. Cut lines go right through the board: the wall's outline and its window and door openings. Engraved lines only mark the surface: the brick joints, voussoirs, cills, lintels, quoins and marks. In the files they are told apart by colour, black for cut and red for engraved unless you change them.

If your laser software expects other colours, click the colour swatch to pick one, or type the colour's code into the box beside it. The colours are used by Export SVG, Print 1:1, the Detail Layer, nested sheets and swatches, and they are saved with the project. The key under the preview (— Cut — Engrave) shows which is which on screen.

3Export SVG

1. Click the wall you want in the Layers list to make it the active panel. Here it is the chapel's west front.
2. Click Export SVG.
3. Save the file. It is named after the panel's size, for example brick-panel-112.6x119.42.svg (with -gable added for a gable wall).

The file is drawn in millimetres at full size, so it imports into laser software at the size you designed, with a 10 mm margin round the wall. Every line is a 0.1 mm hairline. Here is a close look at the door of the chapel and the two windows above it:

What you see in the preview is what goes in the file: openings, arches, string courses, quoins, cills and lintels, chimney stacks on the wall's top, marks and decal outlines. Reveal layers and front layers are panels of their own, so export each one (or use the DXF menu below for all of them at once).

4Export DXF

Some laser software prefers DXF. Export DXF draws the same wall as Export SVG, in millimetres, with the cut lines on a layer called CUT and the engraved lines on a layer called ENGRAVE.

Clicking the button exports the active panel. When the project has more than one panel, the button shows ▼ and a menu opens as you rest the pointer on it:

• Active Panel Only: the same as clicking the button.
• All Panels (Combined): every visible panel in one file, all-panels-combined.dxf, side by side 5 mm apart.
• All Panels (Separate Files): one file for each visible panel, named after the panel and its size.

The menu counts the visible panels at the bottom. To leave a panel out of the "all panels" choices, hide it with the eye in the Layers list first.

5Print 1:1

🖨️ Print 1:1 prints the wall at full size on paper. Choose the paper first from the list above the button: A4 Portrait (the default), A4 Landscape, A3 Portrait, A3 Landscape or Letter. The line under the button tells you how many pages the active panel needs.

Printing opens a print window. Its first page lists the panels and how many pages each takes, and has a 100 mm calibration ruler:

1. Click 🖨️ Print in the print window.
2. In your printer's settings choose 100% or Actual size, never Fit to page, and turn off any shrink-to-fit.
3. Measure the calibration ruler on the printed first page. If it is not exactly 100 mm, the printer has scaled it: check its settings and print again.

A wall bigger than the page is split into tiles, one per page, labelled with the tile's column and row and the panel's name. Each tile overlaps the next by 10 mm, shown with diagonal hatching, and has a registration mark (⊞) at each corner:

To join the pages, line up the registration marks, trim along the edge of the overlap zone and glue. The print shows the brickwork as drawn; reveal cuts are left out of prints.

6Reveal cuts

Reveal Cuts adds small cuts at the mortar joints on window and door reveals: a short line in the cut colour at every bed joint up each side of an opening, running from the opening's edge into the wall. Round and semicircular openings with a brick ring get them at each voussoir joint instead. Open the card to set their Length (0.5 mm unless you change it, up to 5 mm).

7The Detail Layer: stone dressings that stand proud

On the brick panel, stone features are only engraved. The Detail Layer (relief) card makes them as separate parts to cut from a second board and glue on where the brick panel engraves them, so they stand proud of the brickwork as real dressings do. Keystones are a second layer again, glued onto their arch heads.

1. Tick the kinds of feature you want as parts: Bands & cornice, Lintels, Cills, Arch heads, Keystones, Quoins, Hood moulds and Raking & copings. All are ticked to start with.
2. Choose Packed or In place, and whether to engrave Labels.
3. Check the count: the chapel's west front has 20 parts: 7 arch heads, 7 keystones, 6 cills.
4. Click Detail SVG or Detail DXF. The file is named after the panel with -detail on the end.

If the panel has no stone features the buttons are greyed out, and the card says so.

Packed lays the parts in rows, close together, to save board. With Labels ticked, each part has its name engraved on it - W1 arch, W1 key, D1 arch - so you know which opening it belongs to:

In place puts each part where it sits on the panel, with the panel's outline engraved round them: useful to see where each part goes.

The DXF puts the parts' outlines on the CUT layer and the labels and outline on ENGRAVE. For several panels at once, the Panel Library's Detail layers button exports a detail file for each one selected (chapter 9).

8Nest Parts: several walls on one sheet

The Nest Parts tab, at the top right of the window, packs walls from your Panel Library onto sheets of board and exports each sheet as one file. Here we pack six of Crowhurst station's smaller walls.

1. For each wall: click it in the Layers list, click 📚 Library over the preview, type a name and click Save Current.
2. In the Panel Library, tick the panels to nest (Select all ticks them all) and click Send to Nest 1.

BrickIT! works out each panel's exact export, packs them onto as many sheets as they need, and opens the Nest Parts tab:

Drag a part in the Nesting Preview to move it by hand. The preview draws each part at its true size, just as it will be cut, with its name across it. The downloaded file has every wall exactly as Export SVG would draw it, with the sheet's edge as a light grey dashed line:

A part bigger than the sheet gets a sheet of its own, outlined in red, and BrickIT! tells you which. With several sheets, the buttons read Download 2 Sheets (SVG) and so on; the desktop app asks once for a folder and writes every sheet into it.

9Swatch Generator: test pieces

Before cutting a whole building, it pays to try your board and laser settings on small samples. The Swatch Generator tab draws a set of small wall pieces, one for each mix of bond, arch and voussoir you tick, all in one SVG. It uses the brick size from Brick Settings and your line colours.

1. Tick the Bond Patterns to try: stretcher, English, Flemish, the garden wall bonds, header, stack and monk.
2. Tick the Arch Types: None (square top), flat, segmental, semicircular and the three Gothic arches.
3. Tick the Voussoir Types, Brick and Stone. Each arch is drawn once for each voussoir type; a square-topped swatch is drawn once.
4. Under Swatch Dimensions (mm), set the size of each piece (Panel Width, Panel Height), its opening (Opening Width, Opening Height) and the Spacing between them. The sizes snap to the brick size. Show labels writes the bond, arch and voussoir over each piece.
5. Check the Summary and click Export All Swatches as SVG.

Here we untick Flemish and add square tops and Gothic Equilateral arches: two bonds, each with one plain swatch and three arches in brick and stone.

10At the laser

A typical run, as BrickIT! sets it up:

• Joint 0 in Brick Settings: the width of the laser's own cut (its kerf) makes the mortar joint. Any other Joint width draws the mortar that wide.
• Two colours, two jobs: map the cut colour to cutting through the board and the engrave colour to engraving. In a DXF, use the CUT and ENGRAVE layers instead.
• Full size, in millimetres: SVG and DXF files import at the size you drew. If your software asks for units, choose millimetres.
• Dressings on a second board: cut the Detail Layer sheet from the board you want the stone in, and glue each part where the wall engraves its outline.
• Try it first: a sheet from the Swatch Generator shows how your board takes the engraving before you commit a whole wall.

Where next

• Cores, floors and corner keys behind the walls, and the assembly guide: The Building and Plan windows.
• Printing walls in resin instead: Stone walls and resin printing.
• More on the Panel Library, and exporting many panels at once: Projects and the library.