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Configuring Your Design for NearSolid

Layers in illustrator Affinity Designer document layers for NearSolid

To ensure the best experience when importing your designs into NearSolid, it's important to set up your document correctly in your preferred design software. Below, you'll find detailed steps for different applications.

General Recommendations​

  • Use physical units: Set your document to millimeters (mm) or inches.
  • Resolution: Use 96 PPI for accurate scaling.
  • Layers & Colors: Properly organize your layers to facilitate material assignment in NearSolid.
  • Export to SVG: Make sure to export the SVG as editable, meaning it should retain vector information and not be saved as a bitmap image!

Software-Specific Setup​

Adobe Illustrator​

Inkscape​

Affinity Designer​

LightBurn​

CorelDRAW​

Adobe Illustrator​

  1. Open Illustrator and create a New Document.

  2. Set the Units to millimeters or inches.

  3. In recent versions of Illustrator, you must go to
    File > Document Setup → Set Preset to Custom, then ensure Line Art and Text Resolution is set to 96 dpi.

  4. Organize your layers based on material types.

  5. Export: Use File > Export > Export As... and select SVG
    (We recommend creating a keyboard shortcut for this!)

  6. In the SVG options, use:

    • Styling: Inline Style
    • Fonts: Convert to Outlines
    • Images: Embed
    • Object IDs: Layer Names
    • Decimal: 2
    • Minify: ❌ Unchecked
    • Responsive: ❌ Unchecked

Inkscape​

  1. Open Inkscape and create a New Document.
  2. Go to File > Document Properties and:
    • Set Display Units to mm or inches.
    • Set Custom Size if necessary.
    • Ensure the Scale Factor is 1 (96 DPI).
  3. Organize layers properly for easier material assignment.
  4. Do not use “Export” or “Save As Plain SVG” if you want to preserve layers and labels.
    NearSolid reads the native .svg file directly from Inkscape to retain important metadata like layer names, IDs, and visibility. Using "Plain SVG" or other export options may strip out this information.

Just save your file normally with File > Save (Inkscape SVG).

Remember: all text must be converted to paths before importing into NearSolid.
Inkscape does not do this automatically, and text objects may be ignored or render incorrectly.

To convert text to paths in Inkscape:

Select your text → Path > Object to Path

This action transforms your text into vector shapes that NearSolid can interpret properly.

Affinity Designer​

  1. Open Affinity Designer and create a New Document.
  2. Set Units to mm or inches.
  3. Under File > Document Setup, ensure 96 DPI is selected.
  4. Organize layers based on different materials.
  5. Export: Use File > Export, choose SVG, and ensure the following settings:
    • Use document resolution: Enabled (if the document is already set to 96 DPI)
    • Rasterize: Nothing
    • Use Relative Coordinates: Enabled
    • Use hex colors: Enabled
    • Flatten Transforms: Enabled
    • Set viewBox: Enabled
    • Export text as curves: Enabled

CorelDRAW​

  1. Open CorelDRAW and create a New Document.
  2. Set Units to millimeters or inches.
  3. Go to Tools > Options > Document and ensure 96 DPI is selected.
  4. Organize your layers by materials and colors to simplify identification in NearSolid.
  5. Export: Use File > Export, choose SVG, and ensure the following settings:
    • Export text as curves: Enabled
    • Maintain layer structure: Enabled
    • Preserve appearance: Enabled
    • SVG version: 1.1 or later

By following these steps, you can ensure your designs import correctly into NearSolid for a smooth workflow. 🚀

LightBurn​

LightBurn handles SVG export differently from other programs. There are some limitations to be aware of:

  • No Layer Names: LightBurn does not support named layers in exported SVGs, so NearSolid cannot automatically assign materials based on names.

  • Default Layer Thickness: NearSolid will create layers with a default thickness of 3mm, using a basic material matching the layer color.

  • Layer Order Handling: LightBurn does not preserve the exact layer order from your workspace:

    • It first exports engraving layers (F), followed by cutting layers (L).
    • The layers are ordered based on their palette color rather than their arrangement in LightBurn.

    lightburn palette

  • Example: If two shapes exist, one colored #000000 (black 00) and another #FF0000 (red 02), LightBurn will always place the black layer below the red one, regardless of how they are arranged in the document.

  • Current Limitation: NearSolid does not yet support manual reordering of layers after import.

To export an SVG in LightBurn:

  1. Go to File > Export SVG.
  2. Select Flatten Polylines if necessary.
  3. Save the file and import it into NearSolid.

🧩 Want to skip the setup?​

You can download a ready-made template with all settings preconfigured and a sample design to get started faster:

The templates include annotations and visual guides — just remember to hide or delete the NOTES layer before exporting.

⚠️ The template includes the correct document setup (size, units, resolution, layers),
but you’ll still need to double-check the export settings manually when saving as SVG.