Affinity designer with glowforge

Can anyone help me. I’m new to affinity designer and glowforge. I have created this shape in Affinity designer I have converted to curves burt when it gets pulled into glowforge a square is filled. I wish I could add a pic here.

Just drag your picture (or the file if you care to share that) into a reply box so we can try to help you.

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I use AD. If you’re getting these two settings backwards, it will do that.

Screen Shot 2021-11-19 at 2.24.30 PM

The circle in the foreground is the ‘fill’…the black circle behind it is the ‘stroke’ (the single line). If yours looks like this

Screen Shot 2021-11-19 at 2.24.58 PM

then your square will be filled and there will be no stroke around it.

If there’s more to it, please let me know and I’ll try to help you.

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Ok Thanks! Another person messaged me and said it’s a problem will Glowforge. Told me to upload it as a pdf. I’ll try that. Appreciate you taking time to respond.

Absolutely not a problem with the Glowforge. I urge you to learn why it happens in AD. Using a PDF will not correct the problem you’re having. Just curious, why are you converting the square to a ‘curve’?

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Based on the private message exchange it sounded like the old Glowforge bug with not supporting SVG fill rules correctly, which tends to hit us AD users when we use shapes with cutouts. Hence the suggestion to try using PDF, as the Glowforge software is better about supporting both rules correctly in PDF files.

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Can I send you the image somewhere it will be easier to understand.


I was tracing an image by putting those rectangles together some would over lap each oter so i had to join them so it would be a smooth engrave. So I then converted to curves to join them when it was saved as an svg it looked fine but when it loaded into glowforge the middle got filled. Im new at both just learning basics on my own. When I’m connecting other words and images I do convert to curves so I assumed it was the same.

This is definitely the Glowforge bug where the Glowforge software doesn’t handle SVG fill-rule correctly.

Three ways to fix it:

  1. Change the fill rule on that shape from even-odd to non-zero. Then go in and reverse the direction of the inner path. (This is a real pain. I don’t recommend it.)
  2. Try exporting as PDF instead of SVG. In my experience the Glowforge software is better at handling fill rules in PDF files.
  3. Or just rasterize the path. Then you don’t have to worry about it.

Personally I’d try going the PDF route first.

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Are those letters? One thing you probably should do is make sure this box is checked so that when you export, you don’t need to remember to change text to curves…it will do it automatically.

I just replicated what you did by using rectangles joined together and I see what you’re talking about. Let me see if I can figure out what to do with that.

You are absolutely right. I was unclear what they were trying to do until I replicated it myself. So…in this case, a PDF does sound like the right solution. Thanks for looking at that.

those are rectangles in that shape when I convert to pdf it went into glowforge and these 3 lines are darker so i’m worried its going to engrave like that with breaks not smooth

You have to choose each rectangle in AD and ‘add’ them together first. Then export as a PDF. Here is one I just made, showing it on the GF bed.

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Here are two rectangles…two different colors.

highlight both of them and ADD them

Screen Shot 2021-11-19 at 10.11.43 PM

They will be combined into one thing

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Thank you so much let me try this.

I just tried this but its still filling the square in the middle. I kept adding each rectangle then just saved and then exported did the checkmark on export and it still did this. What am I missing?

Thanks. I’ll keep trying

ok got it thanks it finally works! I reread your instructions and exported as pdf. Appreciate you taking time to help me! Trying to learn as I go.

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This is why I suckered myself into paying for Illustrator, after learning it I just don’t don’t have motivation to learn AD now. (I purchased it on sale but then went back to AI lol)
I think learning AD from the beginning is the best path! :slight_smile: Good luck!

I feel I must apologize for saying this was absolutely not a Glowforge problem, as @tim1724 pointed out…that it is indeed a GF bug that caused the OP’s problem. I had forgotten all about that, so I appreciate Tim stepping in to set it straight.

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