The Glowforge seems to cut the length differently from the Affinity Design program.
For example if I design a piece (say a rectangle) that is 15 cm by 6 cm - it cuts out 15.4 cm by 6.2 cm - always larger than the Affinity Designer says it is.
Did not start this way.
Type: Print
Page Preset: Custom 21 x 29.7 cm
DPI: 96 - Portrait
Wondering if there is a setting I’m missing?
Turned the Glowforge off and on - but problem not resolved - any ideas?
You may want to use imperial units when setting up the document and exporting. I’ve been using AD for almost a year (latest file was Sunday), and have never encountered this. I’d double-click the expert export settings too, esp that “responsive” is unchecked.
Where in AD are the “expert settings”?
Sorry – spellcheck fail. Export settings for SVG…
…and I just remembered that “responsive” is an Illustator setting, not AD. There’s a great post in The Matrix that covers the best practices for SVG export from all the major vector editors:
Thank you Dwardio - I can’t use imperial units - I’m in the 21st century and those units are only used by one country in the world now. Imperial is so inefficient, and the companies I work with only use metric system
It did print fine for a while - so I think I must have checked something somewhere along the road…
I’ll check the “responsive” thing though!
Best
Derek
derekwulff@pathfindersdesignandtechnology.com
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Unfortunately Affinity Designer’s SVG export doesn’t export using real units; it always uses pixel units instead. It may be that you’re not actually getting 96 DPI, in which case it will not be scaled properly in the GF UI. (The settings for this are not quite as straightforward as they ought to be.)
As a quick test, try exporting to PDF and see if that loads into the GF UI at the correct size. PDFs always use real units, not the arbitrary pixel units that SVGs default to, so you shouldn’t see scaling problems with PDF.
If you can’t use PDFs due to errors regarding image masks, clipping paths, or other PDF features that the GF doesn’t yet support, there’s one other thing you can try. Set your page size to 20"×12" (50.8cm × 30.48cm). When the GF loads a file with a 5:3 aspect ratio it always interprets it as 20"×12", so if your original document is that size everything magically works regardless of DPI or other settings. It’s a weird hack but it’s useful for dealing with software such as Affinity Designer that won’t export SVGs with proper units.
Thanks for the help, @dwardio and @tim1724! Were you able to get the correct results after trying these tips, @derekwulff?
That worked great Tim - Thank you!! - sending them out as a PDF - it was like magic! great to have an owners forum - someday I hope to have a hack…
I’m glad the PDF worked. 
Note that you may occasionally end up with PDFs that the Glowforge doesn’t like. They don’t support all features of PDF yet. So it’s also useful to know the 20"×12" trick for avoiding scaling problems with SVGs.
That’s great, @derekwulff. Thanks for following up! I’m going to close this thread - if you run into any other trouble, go ahead and post a new topic. Thanks again for letting us know about this!