Creating Stitch Holes in Cutting Patterns

When creating patterns for the GF to use as cutting patterns, do the holes that will be used for stitching have to be patterned as circles, or can solid dots be used instead?

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Great question. Here is an older topic by @JeremyNielsen that discusses this. @morganstanfield, aka The LeatherWoman, explains that it will be a function of what you are putting through the holes in terms of thread and needle.

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A solid dot will tell the laser to raster, an outline with the correct line width will tell it to cut… Cutting would be better since rastering, which is made up of lines close together, may not give a smooth outline and would take longer.

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Beat me to it. :slight_smile:

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Wait a minute. Are you guessing or has that been confirmed? Because the software should be more sophisticated than that. It shouldn’t matter if your file is a filled circle or not, you should be able to tell the machine to cut the edge or obliterate the entire shape.

Even crafting cutting machine software has that much control. I’d expect glowforges to at least be on par.

I think it’s called a high pass filter - where it deals with edges, not the spaces between them. And low pass filter does the opposite (the ‘fill’ space between edges). Or maybe the other way around… At least that’s what it’s called in Photoshop and Silhouette.

Only confirmed on how it works on my lasers… I often use both a fill and an outline at the same time to get a different look so it would be confusing for the software to guess… I guess…lol
IDK I’m a black and white type of designer… make it how you want it, not leave it up to the software to decide…:smirk:

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Thanks a TON you guys. Looking forward to digging into your responses when I get home tonight. I’d like to get some of my patterns laid out so that I can hit the ground running in August, um-er, March 2017. Seriously though, I would much rather receive a unit later than expected with a good power supply than with one that I’d have to worry about burning my house down!

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Pretty sure that an early software demo showed the ability to mark an area as cut or engrave, almost like a magic lasso tool in Adobe products. See if you can find the video where Brad Feld is cutting a design remotely.

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You can order a given shape to cut or engrave.

@madebynick has actually be experimenting with diagonal lines for stitching, with interesting effect.

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Good to hear. I actually prefer round stitching holes. Diamond/diagonal lines create a finished product that is a bit dramatic for my taste. I currently use some hand tools that create that drastically angled stitch, and I’m trying to get away from it. Creating consistently spaced round stitch holes is one of the main reasons I am purchasing the GF!

I had to do this yesterday and found a great solution for Adobe Illustrator. I’m transcribing this from memory, so please correct me if I get the details wrong.

  1. Create a small circle
  2. Give it a stroke, but not a fill
  3. Select the circle and create a scatter brush from it
  4. Set the spacing to something like 400%
  5. Apply it to the path
  6. Edit the spacing to suit (e.g. to make it start and end with a hole, bump it in 1% increments)
  7. Expand appearance
  8. You will have both the path you want and a second path that has no stroke and no fill behind it. (?) Select a circle, send to back. Click on it again to select the invisible path that was behind it. Select…Same Fill And Stroke, then delete to be rid of them all.
    Print!
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