I’ve been reading the comments here about Snapmarks with interest. As many others have said, this is the only feature of premium that is of interest to me, and I’m disappointed in the price point for retaining this feature.
As other folks have said the Snapmarks were originally described as beta, and it was stated at the time that there might be a fee to keep them. But that has never really sat right with me.
I’ve always thought of them as a way to actually achieve one of the early promises of the Glowforge: accurate camera based positioning. As far as I can tell, using Snapmarks is the only way to reliably place your artwork using the camera. I understood accurate camera based positioning to be one of the original promises of the product; one that seems to be to still be unfulfilled all these years later, unless you use Snapmarks.
Yes, jigs can be used for accurate positioning, but that’s not “camera based.”
There is also lots of talk here about making sure that users have run the alignment process. However, right in that process it says “When you’re done with a print, if the print is more than ¼” from where you put it, you may have an alignment problem.” 1/4" is not accurate placement!
Heck, as I type this the website is still advertising the “design with just a pen” feature. It shows someone drawing on the material and then etching with perfect placement. As we all know, that doesn’t work. The etching will be up to 1/4" away from where the pen marks are!
When looked at from this perspective, I think the loss of Snapmarks is a losing a feature that was promised from day one. Not the loss of a beta feature that was never really promised, or only promised as a premium feature.
I know my opinion is just one perspective and that GlowForge needs to do what is right for the business. But I think @ade hit the issue right on the head with reply #505, every single time I want to do something that would have been easier with Snapmarks I’m going to be more and more resentful.
Tom
