Dimension Changes

Using Affinity Designer. Dimensions are changing drastically when opening files in the GF. Not all the time, only some times. This must never happen. GF must never change or translate file dimensions into other sizes. Layout for a Wedding sign and opened in GF and all dim’s were perfect. Needed to recut one letter. Isolated in the Software and saved as SVG. Opened in GF to cut the letter and the Letter is half the size as required.

Your design program has a different .dpi setting than :glowforge:'s GFUI (or possibly it’s set to responsive so it changes, or you’ve got it counting your stroke width) - either you can set your art program to match :glowforge: - or you can create an art board that’s 12"x20" - I find the latter to be much simpler (to the point where I don’t actually know what the GFUI uses…someone will be along to provide that detail :smiley:)

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This is not a post appropriate for the Free Laser Designs category. I will move it to Everything Else where the discussion can proceed.

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I don’t disagree with your findings. GF should never change dimensions, ever. If I make a 1"X1" square, regardless of DPI or file layout that square better be very close to the dimensions with the minuscule exception of the laser kerf.

That would be nice, but there are literally hundreds of design programs out there and they can’t (or it’s not financially feasible) to program in recognition of each one. In face if you program in AD and then move it to Inkscape it’ll also change size - and almost every other two programs out there. It’s a fact of design programs, not a failing solely on :glowforge:'s part.

They fixed it by overriding whatever you send as long as your art board is 12x20.

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The measurement tool will allow you to double check the accuracy of how your file is being interpreted. Also, changing the file to a pdf addresses the dimension change issues. There are many, many posts in the forum regarding dimension challenges faced in Illustrator, Inkscape, Procreate, and Affinity Designer should you care to read about the discussions that have ocurred over the past few years and how various designers have solved the problem.

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GF doesn’t “change” dimensions. SVG files don’t preserve them. If you’ve got Affinity Designer set to export at its default 72 DPI, your files will not import at the correct size, because the GFUI expects 96 dpi.

There are three ways to avoid this problem.

  1. Export at 96 DPI
  2. Set your document size in Affinity Designer to 20x12" – the GFUI will recognize the proportions and adjust your design to the proper size
  3. Export as PDF instead of SVG, as the PDF format does preserve dimensions.
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Well, no. I’m fine, most are fine with a little change here and there. When the program runs the file one time and all the letters are sized properly, then I Isolate one letter out of the sentence and GF reduces the size to half, for the same file that I used before, no, unacceptable. If this is going to maintain then GF must improve it’s scales so they can be read clearly and offer much improved measurements to adjust for the weakness.

See my message above. The problem is with the SVG format, not Glowforge. There’s nothing Glowforge can do about it, as they have no control over the specifications for the file format.

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I was having this same problem for some time. even though I’d been using this machine for a while. Me and my old brain forget sometimes there are scaling differences between apps. So this is a thank you for the reminder.

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