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Searching the forum can be tricky to figure out the correct terms and spelling, leading to frustratingly few results. Here are a few tips to help you get the most out of search.
Take a common topic like living hinges… let’s say you want to try making one for yourself and would like a sample file. Doing a plain search for “living hinge” finds a great deal of results, but they’re really broad, including replies, discussions of settings, and finished projects. Clearly, the search worked but it’s not specific enough. What now?
Use the advanced search options to narrow your search
Searching for “living hinge” in the free laser designs section and limiting to the first post yields lots of links:
The current second link in those results is exactly what you’re looking for:
https://community.glowforge.com/t/living-hinge-test-chips/48643
Experimenting with the various settings in the search can be really useful when you have a really specific need.
Try to think of synonyms that might work.
Perfect example of this came up where someone was trying to engrave pottery before firing. The OP was trying to search for variations of “pottery before firing”, but tweaking it to look for “engraving clay” found discussions that matched. Sometimes it’s just that simple, choosing the right word at the right time.
Use Google to help you with especially tricky searches.
Sometimes you don’t even know the proper names for things. You’re totally out of luck with the forum as it won’t know what you mean. One other trick that can be really useful when searching the forum is leveraging Google’s much more advanced search. Adding “site:community.glowforge.com” to the end of any search can yield really good results. Let’s try “bendy wood file SVG site:community.glowforge.com”, and then check the resulting image results:
https://www.google.com/search?q=bendy+wood+file+SVG+site%3Acommunity.glowforge.com&tbm=isch
Sure enough Google comes through and finds you some results, and most of them mention the term “living hinge”. You’re on your way!
As a last resort, ask away.
Everyone’s time is valuable, so of course it’s best to search first. If you’re really stuck or think what you’re looking for has never come up before, start a new thread in the community support section and people are generally very helpful.