Lets say you have a bunch of wooded coasters that you want to engrave your logo on. You could put them one at a time at the origin of the laser and engrave them one by one. But wouldn't it be nicer to layout several at once and have the laser engrave them all?

The trick is to create a grid that you can lay the pieces out on and accurately have the laser engrave on them. Create a new vector file the size of your laser bed. Then measure one of your shapes/items. If you can get its exact shape great, but if not just figure out a nice geometrical shape, like a circle or square, that it will fit snugly into. This will be your target shape. Create the target and position your design (engraving or cut) in the target. Now copy both the target and your design and paste as many copies as you can fit in the space of your laser bed.

Tip : Leave a little space between the targets so you can set them down without bumping the ones around them.

Before you print the file, move the targets to one layer and your design to another layer. Then turn off the printing for the layer with your design on it.

Cut a piece of cardboard to the size of your laser bed and put it in the laser. Now make sure just the layer with targets is set to print. Engrave, score or cut the target shapes into the card board. This creates a grid on the cardboard that matches the one in the file. Now place the items you are going to engrave on the targets marked on the cardboard. Don't forget to refocus the laser on the tops of what you are engraving on. Now you can turn off the printing of the target layer and turn on the printing of the design layer.

As long as you don't move the cardboard you can just keep laying out new parts, hitting engrave and repeating until you have all your parts done.