Marking & Tracing¶

How to preview a job with the red-light Trace and run it with the laser.

Laser safety

Wear rated laser glasses, keep interlocks in place, and Trace before you Run. You are responsible for safe operation.

Trace (red-light preview)¶

Trace runs the job's motion with the laser off, using the red guide beam so you can confirm placement and size on the part before firing. Pick a mode from the Trace dropdown:

Mode	Previews
Full	The whole job, step by step.
Single Layer	The whole job once: every layer and its mark and cut sublayers, with no repeats.
Perimeter	The outline of the marked area.
Hull	The convex hull (outer boundary) of the marked area.
Area	A filled sweep of the marked area's extents.

Every mode includes cut sublayers: the trace draws the cut band itself, so a band that reaches past the perimeter shows its full extent. Jog sublayers move an axis and have nothing to trace.

Start Trace, confirm on the part, then stop it. Trace needs the controller connected.

Tracing a rotary job¶

On a rotary action the trace follows the splits, not the flat artwork:

Full traces split by split, rotating between them just like the mark, with every repeat in place: passes, sublayers (including a Mark sublayer under its own settings), run-every-N, and the revolution order when Per lap is on. It is a dry run of the job, so a long job takes as long to trace as it does to mark.
Single Layer is the stripped-down version of Full: everything is there, nothing is repeated.
Perimeter and Hull combine every split into one and trace it where the part already sits, without rotating, so you can align a part and check it without losing that alignment. Perimeter is the outline of everything the splits mark, Hull is the convex hull of it.
Area ignores the splits altogether: it traces the whole design's footprint as one flat rectangle, exactly as on a flat job, without rotating. A design that wraps further than the lens field reaches is clipped to the field.

Full and Single Layer always return the rotary to zero when they finish or are stopped.

Running a job¶

Press Run to execute the sequence top to bottom. While running, Run becomes Pause — you can Pause / Resume or Cancel.

Device must be configured (a markcfg7 imported) or Run is blocked — see First-run setup.
If an axis that needs homing isn't homed, a prompt offers to home + run or run anyway (see below).
A safety confirmation is the last step before the laser fires. Click Run Sequence to go ahead, or press Esc (or close the window) to cancel. It deliberately doesn't accept Enter — starting a job takes a click, so a stray keypress can't fire the laser.

Galvo + FocuZ:grbl coordination¶

A job can mix galvo marking with FocuZ:grbl motion and accessory steps — for example: jog an axis into place, switch on air assist, mark, then switch it off. FocuZ runs these in order and waits for each motion step to finish before the next action. Jobs that use GRBL steps need the FocuZ:grbl controller connected.

Open-loop motion

Motion "completes" when the controller reports Idle, not when the axis is confirmed to have physically arrived — see the open-loop note. Homing is what gives position confidence.

Lens activation & homing gate¶

If the Z axis is enabled but not homed when you Run, FocuZ shows a prompt to home + jog + run or run anyway. This protects against marking out of focus on an un-referenced Z. See Lenses, Corrections & Calibration.

Progress¶

While marking, a progress bar shows where you are — a breadcrumb of group / layer / sublayer / pass — plus a percentage and an estimated time remaining.

3D slice marking¶

A 3D Slice action marks a model layer by layer:

Slices run top to bottom by default; check Inverse to mark bottom-up, starting at the floor.
Sublayers (jog, accessory, etc.) can fire on every slice or every Nth slice (Run-every-N).
Fill-Through controls whether the bottom slice is marked. With Respect holes on (any perimeter, or none — see 3D perimeters), the model's through-holes stay real empty space: carved at full depth alongside the background when a perimeter is set, left unmarked without one.
Z+ Offset adds extra depth, entered in mm or slices (pick the unit next to the value):
- With a perimeter, the slice stack shifts up so the background around the model carves deeper.
- Without a perimeter, the base (floor) slice is marked that many extra times — paired with a Jog sublayer, each extra pass steps the axis on, driving the profile deeper into the material.

See Importing Geometry for setting up a 3D job.

Run isolation¶

While a job runs, FocuZ locks the things that could disrupt it — the lens selector and per-axis Enable are disabled, destructive File actions are blocked, and Trace is unavailable. The engine works from a snapshot taken when you pressed Run, so edits you make during a run apply to the next run, not the current one.