I have a fairly simple design that I need to cut out many parts of. I can fit 12 of them on a single smaller sheet of acrylic.
If I have a design with a single instantiation, it takes about 5 seconds to load. 20 seconds to get through “Preparing Your Print” and has a print time of 0:43.
If I duplicate the design 12 times (cut and paste), go back to home then loading the updated design (“Rendering your design…” before there is a screen shot of the bed of the cutter) now takes a little over 2040 seconds (34 minutes)!
If I start with a single instance, replicate and DO NOT go back home, I can render in about 56 seconds to get through “Preparing Your Print” and the print time is 08:20.
So why does loading 12 instances of a design (all on the host, not locally?!?) take over 400x the time for “Rendering your design” compared to one instance???
I will need to just save this (again) as a single instance and then duplicate it manually each time I want to use this file and try and remember to delete the duplicates before I go back to home or will get the forever “Rendering your design…” screen?
This can be replicated with the printer turned off, so wifi does not appear to be a factor.
Is there some way to have the renderer know this is a copy and not choke and die on a simple replication?
Wasn’t there an issue with slowdowns not too long ago that was solved by clearing the browser cache? I remember because I didn’t believe that would work, and I was proven wrong.
I just tried it, first with a simple design (about 100 nodes), then with a complex one (an intricate butterfly with a couple of thousand nodes) - in both cases, the time to “render” was barely any different between one copy, and a dozen. I opened a different design in between making the copies and opening again.
I use CAD software to generate DXF files which I bring into inkscape. For a very simple design, a rectangle with two rounded corners the renderer would slow down with multiple copies. The DXF file appeared to have a lot of segments in the rounded corners. I redrew the object in inkscape and just matched the size to what the DXF import shows and then deleted the DXF portion.
With an inkscape generated shape (essentially identical), I was able to replicate the pattern over 100 times and it only took a short while (forgot to time, maybe 15 seconds?) to render. The print was only about 7 minutes long to get all of the pieces cut.
So even though the shape was simple, the DXF file may have a lot of segments. And the glowforge APP is fine with one, but quickly becomes clogged if I replicate the image multiple times.
This is something that glowforge could address, especially since this is replication so should not have to get bogged down because of memory constraints that they may have self imposed on the rendering of the entire image.
Your CAD program should be able to create SVGs directly. For most purposes that’s a better format than DXF. I use Fusion for my 3D metalwork and only use DXF when I’m importing someone else’s design. DXF was created decades ago before common use computers had the power to do some of graphic manipulation that is common today - things like curves are not a native construct to the DXF format. It’s fairly stalled due to being the lowest common denominator file format.
You’re far better off switching to SVG as early in your process as possible. You’ll have far more control of your drawing and the quality of its output.
I’m sorry about the ongoing trouble you’ve run into with the app responding slowly. I see we’re assisting you with this via email, and I’ve sent you and update there, so I’m going to close this thread.