Coordinate systems

Understand displayed positions, job placement, and the coordinates reported by your controller.

Beam Bench uses different coordinates for editing artwork, placing a job, and reporting the head position. Check which reference a control uses before comparing its values with another panel.

Positions on the workspace

The workspace represents the usable bed area. Its dimensions and Origin setting come from the machine profile in Device Settings.

Bottom Left: displayed X increases to the right and Y increases upward.
Top Left: displayed X increases to the right and Y increases downward.

Rulers, Properties, the pointer readout, and Measure use this workspace orientation. The Display Unit preference changes the displayed units; stored geometry remains in millimeters.

Properties reports the position of the selected editing reference point. Choosing another point in its reference grid changes which part of the selection the X and Y fields describe. It does not change the machine profile's origin or the job's placement mode.

Job placement

Laser Control uses Start From to place output:

Absolute Coordinates uses the artwork's workspace position.
Current Position places the chosen Job Origin anchor at the current head position.
User Origin places that anchor at the saved User Origin.

The Job Origin grid describes the job's bounds. It is separate from the editing reference grid in Properties. Moving that editing reference point does not move the job's anchor.

Controller positions and homing

The Move panel displays the controller's reported work position when the controller supports absolute position reporting. A work position can include a controller work offset, so it need not equal the raw machine position.

Homing establishes the controller's position reference. It does not choose Beam Bench's workspace Origin setting, and the home-switch corner alone does not establish the correct profile orientation. Check your controller's coordinate convention and work offsets when setting up the profile.

Use framing to verify the planned placement before running a job. An unexpected frame can come from Start From, Job Origin, profile dimensions or orientation, or the controller's position state and offsets.

Internal canvas and screen coordinates

Internally, artwork uses millimeters with a top-left canvas origin and Y increasing downward. For a bottom-left workspace, Beam Bench displays Y as the bed height minus the internal canvas Y. For a top-left workspace, no Y flip is needed.

Screen coordinates are pixels after pan and zoom. Zooming changes the view, not the artwork's physical size. Internal canvas coordinates can therefore differ from the positions shown in Properties even when they describe the same point.