Align the overlay
Fit, manually adjust, or solve the camera frame against workspace coordinates.
Alignment positions the captured camera frame over the workspace. A saved alignment takes precedence over a saved Camera Mapping.
Beam Bench offers a quick visual workflow and a corrected point-pair workflow. Manual adjustment uses uniform scale, rotation, and translation. Corrected point-pair alignment can also remove perspective and wide-angle lens distortion.
Quick visual alignment
- Open the Camera panel, select the camera, and click Update Overlay.
- Click Fit to Bed to center and scale the frame inside the configured workspace.
- Click Adjust Overlay.
- Drag inside the frame to move it.
- Drag a corner handle to scale it uniformly.
- Drag the handle above the frame to rotate it.
- Click Save Alignment when the bed in the image matches the canvas.
Done Adjusting exits without saving the current changes and returns to the saved transform. Discard Preview removes an unsaved auto-fit preview when no mapping or alignment exists.
Point-pair alignment
Use this when you can identify known positions more accurately than you can line up the bed edges by eye.
1. Prepare reference points
Choose at least 4 points where you know both:
- The point's location in the camera image.
- The same point's workspace position.
Spread the points around the useful work area. Fixed jig corners, bed mounting points, or low-power marks at known coordinates work well.
2. Open Camera Alignment
Click Align Camera in the Camera panel. The dialog starts with the recommended 9-point layout and shows the latest captured frame when one is available.
Choose a layout:
- Quick setup (4 points) corrects perspective using four well-spread points. This works best when the lens has little visible curvature.
- Wide-angle setup (9 points, recommended) corrects perspective and estimates radial lens distortion. The center and edge points help Beam Bench measure curvature that four corners alone cannot describe.
3. Set each pair
- Select a point row with its radio button.
- Click that physical feature in the captured image. Beam Bench fills Camera X / Y from the click.
- Enter the feature's Workspace X / Y position.
- Repeat for every point in the selected layout.
4. Solve and save
Click Solve, review Quality and RMSE, then click Save Alignment. If you change a point after solving, solve again before saving.
Lower RMSE means the point pairs agree more closely. The saved result includes a corrected image warp, then the normal overlay transform is used for final placement. You can still use Adjust Overlay after solving if a small physical setup difference remains.
Always verify by placing a design over known features near the center and edges of the workspace before running a job.
When to redo
- The camera or mount moves.
- Camera orientation changes.
- Capture resolution changes.
- Material height changes enough to create visible placement error.
- The lens zoom, focus, or field of view changes.
Changing the selected camera or capturing at a different resolution clears saved mappings or alignments that no longer match the frame.
CLI verification
With the desktop app running and the API enabled, beambench-cli camera overlay render --output check.png --view fit saves a combined overlay snapshot for inspection.