There are plenty of reasons to save an SVG, including sharing with other people and ease of repeatable uploading the same file in the future.
FWIW, paste “works” with this file, but I’m not sure how much I will trust it going forward. I suppose that’s also a lesson here: carefully examine what’s on the screen before printing in case there are any glitches.
BTW, if you’re saying “how could you possibly have missed such an obvious discrepancy”, this is just a minimized test case from a much larger and more complicated file. When I uploaded this, it looked ok and I had no reason to suspect it until the screw didn’t fit in the hole. It’s only obvious when you know where to look and when you’re not complacent from hundreds of previous files working just fine.
This is why I save both versions. I create an AI completely with welded and unwelded shapes for editing, then save an SVG file that is layered out and color coded for easy export.
I know others have a strong dislike for adobe and PDF, I like it better for sharing or getting into the GFUI more than SVG because I see lots of SVG issues. Maybe if more people used PDF we’d see PDF issues, but I haven’t seen them.
But there’s more than one way to skin a cat and I’m just tossing out ways I do things.
It’s just my copy of @mark14’s matrix lamp with the addition of the circuit board I made on my CNC mill. I thought it would be fun to run it with minimal components, so I’m using just a single ATmega328, a resistor, and a capacitor, along with some Arduino code. I put up a rather long and boring video a while back that includes the world’s most overcomplicated way of adding four screw holes.
I use “Plain SVG” (vs. “Inkscape SVG”), it works perfectly in the UI and can be edited in Inkscape. The only thing I lose is layers, but by the time I get to printing, layers are not needed, I only use them during the design steps.
I would be quite frustrated with the consistency issues in AI. I can’t help but wonder why someone, somewhere hasn’t figured out what causes (and how to fix) the difference.
I don’t think there’s any issue taking a plain SVG (from Inkscape) and opening in AI, no?
I would love to hear a technical talk some day from the people at Glowforge who spend all day writing code to deal with these file formats. They must have some stories…
I’ve been watching a lot of game design retrospectives lately, it’s fascinating to hear what went into solving some of those challenges.
I have started to use PDF more. My wife has been learning vector design and Glowforge stuff using Affinity Designer, and I have found that PDF is the best way to move files between her AD and my Illustrator. With SVG you have the DPI issue to remember but PDF “just works.”
Totally knocking on wood while I type this, but I’ve literally never had an issue saving as Inkscape SVG - I didn’t see the warning until I was many designs in so never changed my system…
I do wonder what the issue is supposed to be - though if it’s layer based that’s probably why since I never “finish” a file that still has layers, I always compact before saving.
I don’t think it hurts anything with Inkscape. I’ve missed it now and then as well. I just don’t want my files containing any app-specific information.
This is interesting. I played with the file a little and noticed that if you copy the affected circle and paste it, the problem follows the copy as well. There seems to be something about that particular circle . Unfortunately I 'm not enough of an illustrator guru to compare the good circle with the bad one, to see what the difference is.
Looking at the paths of the circles, they are all centered. I used the anchor tool and examined the path for the circle that works and the one that doesn’t, I can’t see any difference.
