Exactly what I was looking for Stephanie, Your insight!
You didn’t imply anything other than your caution not to step on any toes.
To be honest, your participation in the program was very assuring to me.
The fact that this highly experienced professional who already owned two high-end lasers was in the same line as me… That substantiated my decision and eased my anxiety over participating in my first startup.
Thank you Laser Lady! 
What a concise, enjoyable, and fantastic review. Even though you ARE ‘laser lady’ and have copious experience with lasers, it means a lot to me to read your first hand impressions of the Glowforge. Thanks! 
That kind of humiliation only occurs when there is an audience to witness…
Yeah, but did you make a plug for CorelDraw support?? Seriously, thanks for your clear reviews of what you saw and experienced!
Honestly…its one more step…and with the Glowforge software it takes no more time than doing print straight from Corel…
I had to see it to believe it though…
Totally forgot to add this…I asked about the z-axis and how it determines distance and such. How @dan explained, it sounded like Triangle Similarity. (Yes I googled it…lol)
Where as its not new technology. I just thought it was brilliant using it in this application.
This! 
Its sort of like explaining to kids today how amazing computers are compared to when I was in Highschool…they’ve grown up with them so they will not really understand what the world was like without them.
For those of you whose first laser will be the Glowforge…you will never grasp the struggles us early laser users have had to endure…lol
That was a terrific review!
We went through the exact same thing with the craft cutters. At first, they did nothing, we did everything.
Manually.
Now, the users don’t have to understand how they work in order to use them, and the sales exploded.
I see this as the beginning of the craft laser “explosion”. (And I waited around until it happened, not because I consider myself too stupid to learn how to use one of the clunky ones, i probably could with about a year or two of practice, but because I had other things going on that kept me from devoting the time to it that I knew it needed, in order to get good at it.)
I’m still devoting a little time to understanding how it works, because it’s easier to design for the machine that way, but I don’t have to buckle down and really study it the way I did for 3D printing. (That took a year to get comfortable with.)
And that’s why, having someone with 16+ years of using lasers say they were impressed, is a GREAT BIG HAIRY DEAL! 
Great review! Thanks for sharing your experienced insight and overall impression. Very positive! 
Sounds like you are getting at something like this?
Not quite…more like using a beam to triangulate
Yes from what Dan has said a beam is sent at a known angle and based on where the beam is found away from center point of projection is the height of the material
Take a piece of yarn fasten it at one point and move the other point 15 degrees away. Now take a flat piece of stock and move it up and down behind the yarm you will see that where the yarn bisects the stock moves. So if where the intersection is 1mm of center then the material is pretty darn close but if it’s 10mm off center the. The material is further away. And if the yarn is 15mm off center from the names bed then that’s zero for height and as the dot moves closer to center of the projection zero the closer/taller the stock is
YOU PROMISED
I didn’t think of it like that, but yes, quite accurate!
Wow–high praise indeed, coming from you. You raised my level of faith once again.
I was in Seattle on a whim last weekend, didn’t even think to try to crash the offices of GF. Glad you did and let us all know what you thought!
For the record, I’m well aware of the policy of “no spontaneous tours for visitors” which is why I didn’t go. We did however have a great time visiting Snoqualmie Falls, the space needle, Chihuly glass and the EMP museum.
I respected their policy and did not ask to visit. I just mentioned I was in town and received a special invite. 
I’m not sure how, but I missed this thread until today! That is so awesome! glad you got to go and meet them! I’ve been so tempted to drive up from Portland many times and try and bribe my way in with donuts and sandwiches, but I know they’re super busy and overwhelmed. Hearing your opinion and observations really helped calm any remaining worries I had. They made a wise decision inviting someone with your experience and clout (on top of how nice and awesome you are) to check it out. I will just have to join the crowd at Maker Faire to get my fix and shake their hands briefly.
I just finished reading the thread you mentioned it in. I assumed that was the case. I’m almost as happy you got a tour as I would be if it had been me.