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Ok I realise you need to centre the items on the page in Inkscape to be able to find them on GFUI.

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You didn’t post your view. But it’s normal not to see the far left or top of the bed. Should be able to see approximately 11" x 19.5" of the bed, not centered.

If you set your Inkscape page size to 12 x 20, (document properties), the Glowforge will place the resultant design as created in Inkscape. Pay attention to the XY location within the design S/W

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First of all, welcome to the new users! You are going to have so much fun with your machine.

To get the most out of it and avoid frustration with things not working as you may expect, it would probably be a good idea to check out some of the tutorials in the Glowforge Tips and Tricks section. You can find an index to them here:

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I have the same issue with some of my files. At the top of the UI you make the view zoom out. Then you should be able to see your file and move on the material.

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The best way is to set up a 12x20” workspace/artboard and then design within that. That’ll keep everything right there on the screen for you.

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Though if you do end up in a situation where stuff is not appearing in the workspace, you can zoom out and do select all (control or command -A) to grab everything and move it where it needs to be.

If you artboard is so massive that the elements don’t fit in the Glowforge space, I believe the file will error out on upload/rendering.

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The entire artwork was out of view so even if it was selected I couldn’t move it into view. I did solve it by saving it in centre of page in Inkscape though and then it came up in view on the GFUI :+1:

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And be sure you’ve used the HAND icon to position the crumb tray image to align to 0,0, and not solid grey bars showing. Sometimes I think I have the ARROW active to move the artwork, and my work area goes astray because I had the hand selected which moves the work space relative to the GFUI…

I did that once myself… was a huge “DOH!” moment… :rofl:

This is particularly problematic with the DXF files generated by Fusion 360. Non-intuitively, use manual scaling or else the dimensions will be wrong. And, even then, your design will end up WAY off the page somewhere usually down and to the left of the page.

The entire artwork was out of view so even if it was selected I couldn’t move it into view. I did solve it by saving it in centre of page in Inkscape though and then it came up in view on the GFUI :+1:

Ok… not experienced it yet but il have a look at that. Thanks

Ok I will do. Thanks

Thank you. I will try having a look into it. :+1:

I’ve found it’s actually better to design within an 11.5 x 19 work-space as that is as large as you will actually be able to cut despite the advertised bed size being 12x20. I realize it is true that the bed will accept material at 12x20 but you won’t ever be able to cut that size… unless there is a trick I’m not aware off.

My reason for suggesting that wasn’t arbitrary. You’ll see the 12x20 suggestion pop up fairly often… but the reason was stated quite a while back (Jan 2017).

Here’s the original post behind it:

Also, it’s been noted that in cases where a program creates a unitless SVG file (which does happen), this allows the UI to properly scale the artwork. You can actually use any 3x5 aspect ratio, but 12x20 is easy to remember and design to.

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Well I did try cutting something 514mm long and although at first it looked like it wouldn’t fit, I moved it around with the arrow keys and it just fit in but a mm this way or that it would have not.

Thanks for the help in this thread, everyone! I’m glad to see that you were already able to resolve the problem with your artwork loading out of the printable area. As for the area of the bed that you see in the app, I’ll expand slightly upon what’s been mentioned already: the maximum printable area is 11 x 19.5”, and it’s reduced somewhat when the laser operates at high speed (when engraving, for instance), as it can take space for the laser to decelerate.

Could you please let me know if you’re still having trouble with this?

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It’s been a little while since I’ve seen any replies on this thread so I’m going to close it. If you still need help with this please either start a new thread or email support@glowforge.com.