Face Engraver

The Face Engraver cuts inset pockets and scribe lines into panel faces

• decorative recesses, LED channels - that export to the CNC with their depth. Activate it from the Cabybara toolbar or menu ("Face Engraver"); its small dialog opens alongside the tool, and closing either exits both.

Selecting and applying

Click a face to select it (orange), Shift+Click to add or remove more; any face qualifies - on panels, nested components or loose geometry - except hardware, which is blocked. The dialog shows the count and the two values:

• Offset (mm, default 5) - how far in from every edge the pocket boundary sits. Hole loops are offset too, and the pocket keeps the hole.
• Depth (mm, default 2) - how deep the pocket is cut. Depth 0 draws a scribe: just the offset boundary lines, no pocket.

A live preview outline follows the values; a red cross means the offset leaves no engravable region (too big for the face, or larger than a corner arc radius). The measurements box also accepts "offset,depth" directly. Apply engraves all selected faces in one undo step.

Guards: engraving is refused when the depth would cut through the panel ("engraving is for pockets, not through-cuts" - through-cuts belong to the generators), and values entered in mm are true world mm even on scaled components.

Make instance unique (on by default) engraves only the picked instance, making a shared component unique first. Turn it off to engrave every copy of a shared component at once.

Draw Rectangle mode - for LED pockets: drag a rectangle directly on a face (corners snap to edges, midpoints and the center; a green dot marks snaps) and it is engraved immediately at the Rect depth (default 8 mm, remembered). The measurements box shows the size while dragging.

What an engraving is afterwards

Real geometry (a recessed face) plus an invisible record on the panel that marks it as an engraving with its depth. There is no edit UI: remove an engraving with Undo rather than hand-deleting the pocket (hand-deleting the geometry leaves the record behind, which still shows in reports and still splits cut-list grouping).

Export

• DXF: the pocket outline exports on the OP_ENGRAVE layer with a depth label ("D8") at its center. Scribes export as lines without a depth label.
• Nesting viewer and printed sheets draw engravings teal (dashed black on paper) with the same depth labels.
• Production Report: parts show notes like "2x engrave D2, 1x scribe", cut-list exports have an Engraving column, and engravings are part of the part-grouping identity.

Engravings sit on one side of the panel, and only the side selected with the Face Painter exports: applying to the non-exporting side warns that the pocket "will not appear in the DXF until the panel face is flipped". Pockets do not change a part's price or nesting area - only through-cuts do.