Cardboard settings, new Catalog design pages & updates to the UI: 6/23/21 Latest Improvements

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Yay, updates!

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Whee! Love being able to choose the colours and default cardboard FTW!

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I really appreciate the subtle changes to the UI and the updated object interactions. I’ve been waiting for some of these seemingly small feature improvements a very long time.

Bravo!

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I was twice excited by the announcement, especially that they are including palettes for color-blind users:

Modesty prevents me from mentioning the other thing. :innocent:

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So, it looking more and more like most new features will be available for customers that are paying a monthly subscription.

Pretty sure in the early days it was said this was not going to happen.

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Yes. What’s the difference between providing free settings for (non-proof-grade) paper and Amazon cardboard? Does not sit well with me either. IMNSHO this is not what I’d expect from Glowforge. :sunglasses:

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This does not make sense to me either. Spending $4,000 on a machine is a lot! And while I understand subscriptions for some things, it seems like most should be included with our large dollar purchase. I could understand a subscription for things like already made files and designs, but to make people pay more to make their multi-thousand dollar machine work better…that doesn’t sit well with me either. I hope they don’t decide to do what Pelaton just did. Bricking the machine unless they pay the monthly fee. I have to admit, I knew this before buying my GF, but I though, “They would NEVER do that!” I hope I wasn’t wrong.

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Well, the announcement specifically says “early access” so it could be that Premium users just get to play with it sooner is all. I don’t know, just speculating.

Here’s the quote from the announcement:

“Starting this week, Premium members will get early access to presets for cutting, scoring, and engraving on some types of corrugated cardboard. “

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Not a fan of Premium but it was clear from day 1 that it would eventually happen. The Terms and Conditions had subscriptions in mind. And it was clear there would be charges for designs. What Dan said was that we would never have to pay extra for the original delivered capabilities. I think that promise is mostly kept. Everyone can still cut cardboard and paper, just not automatically.

Again not saying I agree or disagree, but if we looked at what was being promised and what the business model was set up for it was obvious.

The only thing that has ever scared me is that the company could be sold and everything becomes subscription. No promise by Dan is valid at that point and nothing legal could be done to prevent it.

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Yeah, pretty sure “early access” doesn’t equate to Basic owners never getting it. Cardboard from different manufacturers is going to cause a lot of headaches, and I would guess they want to work out any kinks or unforeseen major issues by rolling it out a little slower than dumping it on everyone at the same time.

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Yep. And early access is a stated benefit of Premium, IIRC.

It’s not like anyone else can’t cut cardboard. Just figure out the settings like any other material.

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Absolutely true, and in the Beyond the Manual section are tons of posts for cardboard, cardstock, paper, etc.

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Not having the suggested settings for cardboard auto populate is only a small thing and is an early access thing, not a forever thing. There are plenty of posts in Beyond the Manual regarding settings for cardboard, chip board, cardstock etc. People are not paying a subscription to make their machine work better. Your machine works the same as mine and most of us have worked out settings for cardboard on our own if we use it for prototypes. Early access to suggested cardboard settings really isn’t worth getting worked up over.

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Automatic settings are cool and all, but not at all necessary. Everyone should have a test file ready to roll with new materials. And everyone has the capability to save and name those settings, so that you only have to test a new material once (variations in material batches not withstanding). I understand complaining about subscription services in general, but not about ‘not having cardboard settings’ be an automatic thing. Testing and saving settings is simple. REALLY simple.

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It might just be an important clarification to keep in mind going forward. I can see how this can be interpreted both ways - premium only, or, premium early access which is in essence a wider beta program, with a larger rollout in the future.

However, if it were premium only… I’d really hate to see something like settings get thrown into that premium category. In an effort to say it nicely, that seems like a really cheap trick to try and drive people into premium, when it was touted as being a means to continue innovative software efforts.

That said though - for example, Universal Lasers has a pretty expensive database available with a lot of different material settings available (not common or standard materials), that goes way beyond their default database, which is fairly extensive.

On the other side, Trotec will test any material I send to them, and have their engineers run a full material analysis.

So, I guess it is what it is. :slight_smile:

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The point of my statement was as of late the new trend has been, ‘We have a new feature for our premium members…’ regardless what the feature set is- Its concerning.

There are features promised from day one that still hasn’t happened or will never happen. One of which was why we got ours initially.

Anyway. It was an observation and a opinion. No need to contort or defend.

Carry on.

Just curious, which feature? I don’t even remember a full list of promised capabilities. I can think of some things like a continuous autofocus and kerf compensation based off of material thickness.

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Using the Marco camera for duplexing. AI plug-in. Direct DXF support. Material Curve tracking.

About 2 or more years ago Glowforge ‘realigned’ the feature list to ‘not confuse’ customers. Which removed all of the day one promised features.

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i’m trying to remember specifically what the AI plugin would have been.