I’ve designed a few projects (board games and crafts) in power point and had them printed on various materials. Can I use Powerpoint to design something with cutting and scoring of wood or acrylic?
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Maybe? The thing you need is vector graphics. Vectors are paths that your laser can use for cutting and scoring. If PowerPoint can output vector graphics as pdf or svg your Glowforge should be able to work with it.
I asked chatgpt about it, here’s what it said:
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Sorta.
Shapes, text, icons, charts → yes, they’re vector inside PowerPoint.
Photos / screenshots → no, those are raster.
Exports:
- PDF / SVG → vectors stay vector
- PNG / JPG → everything rasterized
- EMF → vector (Windows-friendly)
So PowerPoint does work in vectors, but only for its native objects—not images.
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As with anything ChatGPT puts out you’ll need to verify it. Let us know how it goes!
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thx that is helpful! Chat GPT has done me dirty recently. I made an ugly family crest in canva just now so I think I will try that method. It’s my maiden name with a few of my family’s favorite Latvian things. Hope the format is ok.
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If it’s not, and you’d like an assist, reach out here. There are a bunch of absolute experts on here who can frequently take rasters and make them vectors in just a few minutes (depending on how complicated of course).
I learned vectors in Inkscape by starting with other people’s designs from here and figuring out how they were put together 
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To your original question. Yes, you very much can, just export as an SVG. I don’t know anyone who has this as their personal favorite way to create for the Glowforge but it certainly works and for some things and some people it will work better than Inkscape due to all of the built-in shapes.
Thanx for reminding me that it is always sitting there when I need something that is mostly text and shapes.
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