13 Things GF needs

  1. Standby mode
  2. Do not keep scanning - if the lid hasn’t been opened nothing has changed!
  3. A “pause” job function
  4. Much better software on the UI
  5. Save own materials
  6. Materials need organising by folders
  7. Proper alignment and save alignment
  8. Cut by moving to nearest point of cut (see living hinge)
  9. A more concrete Save and Save As - ideally back to the PC, but at least to personal catalog
  10. Folders within the catalog
  11. Add artwork from catalog
  12. Numerical position and scale
  13. Scale in single direction
11 Likes

That’s the mode it’s in when it’s not cutting.

Not sure I know what you mean by that. It scans every time the lid is closed and after each job. Each of those events represent a change. So I’m sure I’m not understanding what you mean.

A few have made the same request. (I’ve heard the reasons, but I don’t subscribe to the need. But, hey… That’s just me! :slight_smile: )

Too subjective. You’ll want to get some specifics going here. In general, the software’s beta, so it can only get better from here. :slight_smile:

Probably the most-requested need. Until they get around to it, check this out:

Not sure what you mean here. Within the cutting section? Or folders in the design selection area (the “Home” area)? The latter I totally get. The former I’m not sure I understand the need.

You’d think that’s a given. Unfortunate it needs to be requested.

Don’t get it.

I can see why you’d think you’d need this. But the GF app isn’t a design app. You want to do all of your design work in your design app. I prefer to think of the GF app as a (glorified) print driver. You only bring it up when you’re ready to cut. And then you should only need to make a very slight adjustment based on the position of your material.

I’m thinking you might mean the Home screen, not the Catalog? The Catalog has sections listed on the left. Not a folder structure, but same purpose I’d say. The Home screen, on the other hand, is in serious need of folders.

Again, I’m presuming you mean Home screen. And… Yeah. That’d be great!

Again, that’s really something you’d do in your design app. I submit you want to have your file ready-to-cut when you bring it into the GF app.

While I stand firm on making any design changes in your design app, for off-the-cuff, “I don’t care how this is stretched out I just want it to fit on the material just like this”, this is a feature that could certainly help us.

Some great stuff here. Keep up the good ideas!

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That last feature would be great to track a square or circle around something you want cut out. Or a line just to clean up your leftover materials. (Instead of having to go to the sawstation and cut it off manually. What are we? Peasants?! )

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I usually load up my straight_line_for_leftovers_cleanup.svg and stretch it across the whole sheet. Zip, done.

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Stand by mode is a proper turn everything off, wait on sleep.

Scanning. It scans when I close the lid, it scans before the print, it scans on a follow up print. It doesn’t need the scan between the lid closing and before each print.

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Folders for catalog and materials are needed as a away of managing an every growing collection of both.

You can see the issue now,(a) it is not possible to see a list of all materials and (b) home screen already has many uploaded prints and the free catalog, in a couple more months scanning that list will be hard.

Numerical scaling and positioning is needed to cut anything pre-printed (or for that matter previously cut)

Move to nearest point on the next cut. Watch it cut a living hinge and you see it does not optimise the path of the cut. It is cutting parallel lines, so could move to the nearest end of the next cut, it doesn’t.

While I’m on this, I’m not convinced about the order of the separate cuts within an object being in the drawn order or z-order either. Not normally an issue until you cut paper or card when it becomes crucial.

SVG 1.1 spec doesn’t use z-order.

If you’re interested in the actual specifications:

https://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/render.html#RenderingOrder

That’s not to say that Glowforge has to follow them for pathing. They are following them though for the rendering / drawing of elements.

I agree that it should not need to do any additional material scans between jobs if you have not lifted the lid. (at least not the way it does now, by scanning the same point in the bed each time)

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You have this already. Draw a circle in your design software, and upload it to the forge. Whenever you want to employ it to cut around something, click the “Add Artwork” button in the top left of the UI, drag and resize around your object. Works the same with the line you mentioned.

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There is a difference between the scanning required to give you a valid preview image after you close the lid and the scanning necessary for the material height. Although they are incorrectly labeled the same in the UI, they are quite different operations and both are necessary.

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But if I don’t lift the lid between prints it doesn’t need the scan. Begs the question why one scan at the start doesn’t do both

Really? Granted, it’s not finished, but do you think it’s because it hasn’t been mentioned enough times?

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If I’m doing a living hinge in acrylic I don’t want it cutting them next to each other - the plastic will melt and I’ll get a goobie mess.

Same for thin wood or paper. Except then I’m likely to get :fire:. Spacing out the cuts for living hinges allows the material temp to moderate between cuts.

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I dearly wish it actually did this. Preferably with asking first making sure the head landed at the correct place directly under the camera at what ever those coordinates are. For some reason particularly if it encountered a lot of sharp turns the head alignment can get off quite a lot totally destroying the material in the process. Even running the cut over 3 times can be as much as an inch off but even a half millimeter can wreck the design.

Re-running a cut without moving the material should not have any alignment difference. This sounds like a problem for Support.

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Support has known about it for some time. This is my most recent case:


And that was selecting to run 3 passes at 250 and 50% power. In this case “only” less than a mm but that much is huge on this design.

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If there is ANY decernable error in a multi-pass engrave (selecting the number of passes via drop-down manual entry) then the unit has a problem.

If you are doing high speed scores with a gazillion direction changes the unit is likely to violently shake and I wouldn’t be surprised. Not sure which you are showing.

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