I am trying to create a cut out an acrylic stand for my friend. It’s a “Follow Me” on social media plaque that is 4 x 6 ". I uploaded my design and had the choice to engrave it, which is great…but I need to cut out a 4.6 square around it.
I tried creating just a regular PNG file in Canva with a square line and it didn’t work. I also have Adobe and created a file in Illustrator and created a square with an outline and that didn’t work. Then I tried to use the GF feature but it is $50. I cannot pay for the GF Premium since I cannot use my GF yet without getting sick. I’m going to try once more today with my new setup in my garage.
I hope someone can help…I am attaching a photo as well.
Anything that’s an outline that’s got a color fill (white is a color so you can be fooled in to thinking there is no fill when there actually is) the GF will want to engrave. So the reason all your attempts ended up with “engrave” is because they square objects also had a fill.
Make a square of the size you desire. Make sure that the “fill” property is set to “no fill” so it’s just an outline.
Alternately, you can override what GFUI decides to do, you can choose cut, engrave, score for anything. Click on the tile on the left edge of the GFUI and you’ll see your options along the top of the popup that appears.
Note when you save from Illustrator in SVG you have to choose the right options. Text has to be “Outlines”. Images have to be “Embed”, and “Responsive” has to be off.
Here’s a 6x4 rectangle SVG file. Right click it and choose “Save As…” and you should see the file name “6x4 Rectangle.svg”.
Randy…you rock. It was really nice of you to upload the file for me. Thank you so much.
I finally have the design together now. Thanks for those tips, I will try creating one in Illustrator with those steps.
It took longer to write the post than it took to make the file. So after I’d written the post, I figured what the heck, it’s like 1 minute’s work. So it was no trouble at all. Glad I could help you out. Enjoy!
If you have Illustrator, you have all the tools you need to create designs for your Glowforge. Randy already helped you with your square but obviously you are going to want to create much more now. Please take the time to go through the First Prints tutorials. Go through them as many times as you need to understand them fully as that is how you will learn to get so much out of your Glowforge. Although there is a tutorial there for Inkscape, many of the principles apply for Illustrator too.
Thanks for the help and clarification @randy.cohen . I’m going to close this thread @aman4slp - if the problem reoccurs, go ahead and post a new topic!
