Affinity Designer Text Export Issues for Score

[jtandrew]

Hi all,

I am hoping you might be able to help out. I have done some searches and tried to find any videos that may assist in the problem I am having.

I am using Affinity Designer to do my design work and import into GFUI with either SVG or PDF format. I created one file that is my set of letters for a phrase to put onto a sign. I then created a second file with the same phrase and the text formatted to be used as scoring on the sign so it will help with placement.

I have converted the text to curves and it mostly works except for a few letters that are having issues. Letters such as ‘o’ and ‘e’ do not work with SVG properly imported into the GFUI. I converted to curves I removed all the fill on the letters and just have an outline.

When I converted to a PDF it solved the issues of those letters but the ‘s’ is filled and has a line as seen in the attached screenshot.

Any help would be appreciated. I am a newbie and have only used the machine less than a dozen times so I am still trying to get past some of the annoying format nuances.

Thanks!
Jim

[Xabbess]

Hi. I use AD, also. Unless you’re doing it for a reason which I don’t understand, you shouldn’ have to convert your text to curves. Just make sure the little box is checked on your export section.

Also, is there a reason why you’re making two separate files for your engrave and scores? You should be able to have both of them in the same file, just in different colors. Then, in the GFUI, set the score to your choice, and set the engrave to ignore. When you’re finished scoring, set that one to ignore and set engrave to your choice.

[rbtdanforth]

@jtandrew

but the ‘s’ is filled and has a line as seen in the attached screenshot.

If you set the layer to sore and not fill the issues with the “S” would go away, but there are bigger issues with how the file was created as those letters that fill the way you like have two lines and score would get both of them looking not so good.

I use Inkscape but the design needs to be created differently or you will need to use the node editor to fix what is there.

[Xabbess]

By the way, since this post isn’t about the Glowforge itself but about working in a design app, I’m going to move your post from the support section to the beyond the manual catagory…

[Xabbess]

Something else I noticed in your post…are you wanting to engrave the text onto something…or cut the text out? If you are engraving directly onto something, you won’t need a score for placement, but if you’re cutting the text out and wanting to glue it onto something else, then your post makes more sense to me.

[jtandrew]

Thanks for all the information. Sorry for posting in the wrong section.

I was only doing separate files to keep the steps easily tracked. It appears my explanation was not clear. I have two pieces of wood. The one piece of wood is some 1/8" Baltic Birch that I am cutting letters out of. The second piece of wood is an 1/4" piece of wood that I have painted and I want to mark on that piece where to glue the letters.

I am going into my my file and trying to see if I can get the file to export differently now.

[jtandrew]

I recreated the text and then did not convert to curves. I then created a new export option for Glowforge SVG that does the convert to curves on export.

The only problem I am having now is that the letters are being exported much too large and not the same as they were in the original file. @Xabbess is there a setting in your export that you use to keep the size the same?

[Xabbess]

I realized after I wrote all that, that I should have asked you more about your project. I understand now.

To answer your second post…can’t remember exactly how I did this to begin with, but figure out how to create a preset as I have done here. Then, you can always use the same 20"x 12" preset and everything will stay in the correct size. It’s the same size as the usable part of the GF bed. Keep the dpi at 96, and always export the entire document, not ‘selections’. My screenshot shows document units in millimeters, but I always use inches. Not sure how this changed on me, but this gave me a good chance to fix it for my own. Of course, you can use whatever units you please.

[djfb]

I was confused there too