Laser engraving workflow software for shops

How it works

A Tuesday-morning job, end to end

A customer emails a phone photo of their dog and wants it inside a 100 x 80 mm crystal award. Open Photo Studio, drop the photo in, and run Remove Background so the subject reads cleanly against the glass. Set the black and white points under Levels; a flat, grey original is the most common reason an engraving comes back muddy. Then use Send to, pick Mesh Studio, choose the 2.5D card and the Dimensional v4 model, and press Generate Mesh. When the preview looks right, Send to Crystal Studio. The mesh lands inside a wireframe blank. On the Crystal tab set the shape and the blank's real dimensions in millimetres, add your margins, then Fit in Crystal. Open Convert, leave the method on Portrait layers, set Best viewing direction to the face the customer will look at, and press Convert to Point Cloud. Export PLY and load it into your engraving software.

Running several jobs at once

Generation happens on our side, not inside your browser tab. When things are busy you get a position in line and a wait estimate, and you can close the tab; the finished result turns up on the Jobs page. If a job fails, the credits go back automatically. Projects auto-save to your account, so the laptop you quote on at the counter and the machine in the back open the same file. Two options pay for themselves on repeat work. Append conversion settings to filename writes the XY step, Z step and viewing direction into the exported file's name, which is what makes a re-cut six months later reproducible without hunting for notes. And Fit to time limit takes a number of minutes and re-runs the conversion at progressively wider point spacings until it finds the finest setting that still fits the slot you have on the machine.

What it will not do for you

It does not drive your machine. There is no controller, no camera alignment, no material library. Power, speed and focus stay in the software you already run, and nothing here changes your test grids. There are no shared team seats today. A shop usually runs one account and opens projects from whichever workstation is free, which works, but it means you cannot give a part-timer restricted access. The studios need a screen at least 768 pixels wide, so a phone is out; a laptop or a large tablet is fine. Finally, AI output varies between runs. If a mesh comes out well, approve it and save the project rather than assuming you can regenerate the same thing later. The 3D mesh models carry a Beta badge and do best on simple shapes, and Embossing Studio is still early access.

Frequently asked questions

Can I work out what a job costs before I run it?

Yes. Every AI operation has a fixed credit cost shown on the button before you submit, and your balance sits in the top bar. Exporting a point cloud from Crystal Studio also costs credits. The exception is WAVELENGTH v1.2, which prices by the output size and quality you pick; it shows a worst-case estimate first and settles the real cost when the job finishes.

Does every designer in the shop need their own account?

There are no shared team seats at the moment, so most shops run a single account. Projects auto-save to the cloud and reopen from any machine with that login, which covers the common case of quoting on one computer and designing on another. If two people need to work at the same time, they need separate accounts and separate credit balances.

What happens to a job if I close the browser or my connection drops?

The job keeps running. Generation happens on our side, so closing the tab does not cancel anything. The result appears on the Jobs page when it is done, and the project is still in your list. If a job fails outright, its credits are refunded automatically, so a dropped connection never costs you a charge with nothing to show for it.