Selecting, Moving, and Sizing Artwork
Now that you you know how to get around the Workspace, you're ready to start selecting graphics and making modifications. LightBurn has lots of tools to do that, but we'll focus on a handful of options that you can't get by without.
Selecting¶
The Selection tool is active by default, but if you've been working with another tool, it will be inactive. To activate it, you can click on the cursor icon in the Creation Toolbar, or press the Esc key to close the other tool you were working with.
Once it's active, click any object in your Workspace to select it.
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If you already have an object selected, and want to add another, hold Shift while clicking the next object.
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Holding Ctrl/Cmd will toggle the selection status of any object, meaning that if it's currently selected it will be removed from your selection, and if it's currently not selected it will be added.
You can also click and drag to create boxes that will select objects, or add or remove objects from your selection, when combined with the above modifier keys. There are two types of selection boxes that work slightly differently.
Click, hold, and drag to the right to create a red Enclosing Selection box. Release to select all objects that are fully contained within the box.
Click, hold, and drag to the left to create a green Crossing Selection box. Release to select all objects that are fully contained or crossed by the lines of the box.
Moving and Sizing¶
Once you've selected objects, you'll notice a few changes to their appearance.
Selected objects are drawn with an animated dash pattern instead of solid lines, and you'll see several gray handles appear on and around the perimeter of the selection area.
You can use these handles to move, rotate, and resize the selection.
Click, hold, and drag the gray handle in the middle to move an object around.
Click, hold, and drag any of the handles around the selection's perimeter to resize the selection. Drag outward to make it bigger, or inward to make it smaller — the handle on opposite the side of the selection from the one you clicked will be anchored in place, meaning the selection will be resized in toward, or out and away from, that point.
Click, hold, and drag any of the curved double arrow icons around the selection area's corners to rotate the selection.
Grouping¶
When you move and resize graphics, you'll sometimes want to make sure that certain collections of objects maintain their size and position relative to one another.
You can accomplish that using Grouping, which tells LightBurn to treat several objects as a single unit. To Group objects, first select them, then press the Grouping icon in the Main Toolbar, or Ctrl/Cmd+G on your keyboard.
To treat the objects as individual units again, press the Ungrouping icon or Ctrl/Cmd+U.
Grouping objects interferes with the ability to use some of the tools in LightBurn, so if you can't use a given a tool, it could be because you have Grouped objects in your selection. You can tell an object is Grouped when you select it by the animated dash pattern — instead of the normal dash pattern, you'll see a dot-dot-dash pattern.
For more help using LightBurn, please visit our forum to talk with LightBurn staff and users, or email support.