Can't figure out why the GF sees this file as an engrave when I have separate operations defined for score and engrave

[hansepe]

I’m not sure exactly what you’re trying to accomplish. I do agree you’d have trouble with this file though.

There is a bitmap hidden somewhere but I can’t find it. I’d just set that to ignore. And the other paths can be converted between engrave, cut and score, although you have a lot of things sitting on top of each other so you’ll have trouble with lots of passes in the same spot.

I’d suggest watching this video to set-up your workspace:

Video Tutorial - Illustrator Workspace Setup

Here is a walkthrough showing how to set up Illustrator the way I think you should set it up, starting from scratch: [Illustrator Workspace Setup for Glowforge Laser Cutter]

And this video to see @chris1 go through his entire workflow:

Video Tutorial: Start to finish design in Illustrator

Most of the tutorials I’ve done so far have been about a specific tool or technique, so I thought I should make one that follows the whole thing from empty document to finished product. [Start to Finish: Illustrator Design for Glowforge Laser Cutting] (Edit: fixed the green glitches in the video and re-uploaded)

Those two videos helped get me up to speed quickly.

If you setup your AI session as noted above you don’t have to convert text in your AI original files, that will be handled when you save as (or export). Good luck.