there’s no reason we can’t ask or talk about how. but asking someone to give you their work isn’t the same thing as talking about the process.
people do often share their files, there’s even a whole section for doing that. it’s just considered to be bad etiquette in general to ask people for their actual work files and it’s against the rules here. but it’s highly encouraged to ask people about their process, their settings, what materials they used, etc. that’s where this forum is useful.
The majority of people are happy to share, and there’s a whole section dedicated to it (Free Laser Designs). The Glowforge folks who kindly host this forum for us want a place where designers can show off their projects without feeling pressure or requests to give away the files.
I encourage you to stick around, I think you’ll find that there is a very vibrant culture of sharing and helping each other out here. This rule might rub you the wrong way at first, but it might even start to make sense after a while.
It puts the artist/maker in a bad position… Either they give you their secrets and lose their unique design, or they have to say no and feel bad for saying no.
One thing you certainly can do is ask something like “Hey… I’ve never been able to {insert something very specific here}. You seem to have tackled that. Would you mind sharing how?” Rather than kind of generally asking for the whole ball of wax. Ya know?