Each label cuts its own gap first. Upright engraves faster and reads better on material; along-the-line is for drawings meant for paper.

⚠️ A dash is a real break in a real path, not a linetype: laser software ignores linetypes and would cut the line solid. So a dashed contour is many short marks, and the count is reported before you write the file.

A pass is a machine operation with its own power and speed — choosing a colour here chooses which one the line is cut with, not how it looks on screen.

Short strokes down the fall line, hung off this layer's contours and drawn longer where the ground is steeper. The oldest way of showing terrain without tone — and still the grading plan's notation for a cut face or an embankment.

⚠️ Downhill is read from the ground itself, not from which way the contour was traced — a hachure pointing the wrong way turns a hill into a hollow with no other symptom. Every tick is a separate head move, so the count is reported before you export.

One threshold turns this layer into patches — everywhere the value exceeds it. Disturbance is the worked example: threshold the difference between two epochs and the patches are the ground that moved.

Overlay is added ground standing proud by its own thickness; window is removed ground, a real void. Two sheets get registration holes cut through both — pin them with dowels before gluing.

The values sampled on a regular grid, each sample a circle whose diameter is the magnitude — a grading plan's read of cut and fill. Point it at the difference between two epochs and the circles are the ground that moved, sized by how much; at the layer's own values for elevation; at its slope for steepness as marks. A raster exported from another tool (a slope or wetness surface) loads as a layer like any other and can be drawn the same way.

⚠️ The difference is drawn, not left to the machine. A circle on the engrave pass looks solid on screen, but what the file carries is an outline — whether it comes out filled depends on that pass being set to raster in JobControl. Hatching puts the distinction in the geometry, where no machine setting can lose it. On material there is no colour to fall back on.

Both sides share one scale — the largest magnitude either way — so equal movement is an equal circle whichever way the ground went, growing from nothing at zero out to full size at the extreme. ⚠️ A hatched circle is many marks, not one; the fill-line count is reported before you export.

The same values as line density: parallel scanlines that run solid where the value is strong and break into shorter dashes as it weakens. This is the read for a surface with no meaningful contour — a slope raster, a wetness index — where what you want is tone and a laser has no tone but marks.

⚠️ Every dash is a pierce. A run at full density leaves as one continuous path, and a dash under 0.3 mm is dropped rather than burned in place — but the mark count is still the job, and it is reported before you write the file.

The ground cut open: parallel cuts across the plate, each profile engraved along the line it was taken from. Three cuts put one exactly on the centre line. The profile rides on its own cut because a zero margin leaves nowhere to stack it — and a plate that must tile with its neighbours cannot be resized to make room.

⚠️ The vertical is exaggerated, always, and by a lot at plate scale. The tool computes the true factor from the height you allow and states it in the readout and the cutting report — put it on the drawing.