New to Inkscape... I'm making a circle, no fill, black outline, 2.75" dia.  2nd circle, 3" dia.  Then a clock face, 2.5" dia, and inside that a tiny circle (black fill) to mark the center.  When done, will open with K40 Whisperer to cut on wood with laser...

Problem is that when I align the items, the square corners of the clock face image cut thru the background circle(s)... I can also only get one of the circles at a time to be visible.  So, I have segments instead of full circles around the clock face.

1)  How does one eliminate the background borders to not have the box corners cut into the background image(s)?
2)  How does one make the images transparent (?) to let both circles be visible?

Running Xubuntu 16.04

TIA  DK

Mmh, I think your image's structure might be different from what you think it is. Can you please:

- share the file

- show us a screenshot from that other program - it's hard to understand what the issue is

You've also got filters in your document - I think for cutting, those aren't needed at all... Maybe removing them will reveal some surprises?

Here's the two images I'm trying to stack (align)...   When I put the clock face over the circle, the square corners of the clock face graphic cover the arcs of the circle that are underneath.

I've not messed with graphics programs for many years (I'm retired IT - NT4.0), and am finding that some graphics do this, and others do not, no clue the difference in them...  Seems to be a crap shoot as to whether or not they will play together nicely.

Hey dkolars,
So you have a png picture that covers some of the vector circles?

You could select and trace the png with menu > paths> trace bitmap.
Then the clock face will be drawn as vectors and you can delete the png file.

-> no more rectangle
-> everything transparent

Or, if your machine will actually cut out raster images (from your description of the problem I'm not clear if it does or not) (the clock image is a raster image) you could simply put the vector circle that I see in your SVG file, on top of the raster image.  Then its opaque background won't blot out what's underneath.

You can use Object menu > Raise, Lower, Raise to Top, or Lower to Bottom, to change the z-order of selected objects.  Or there are buttons on the Selection tool control bar, that do the same thing (the control bar is the first bar above the horizontal ruler, and the buttons change depending on which tool you have enabled).

If your machine will not cut a raster image, you'll need to do what Kirstie suggests, and vectorize the clock image.

Tried "stuff"...  Tracing Bitmap left an image that had less sharpness on the numbers on the clock..  like the printer was running out of ink.  Nope, dat not work. 

Setting the fill on the circle that I drew (was set to "white")  created a circle that could not be moved.  Hmmm...  Opened clock image in Gimp, looked at "Image - Mode"... was set to "Indexed"... Set it to "RGB" and 'poof'... all works as I wanted it to...

Thanks for the assist.  Graphics iz hard sumtimes!!