How Glowforge currently treats it:
• Engrave – burn away some of the material without cutting all the way through.
• Score – burn partially down while following a single vector path without cutting all the way through.
• Cut – burn completely through the material while following a vector path.
Score and Cut are used on vector paths. Engraving is used on Fills and Raster images.
Okay, that’s more or less what I thought. Just wanted to clarify the interpretation. Cut = 100% depth, score = variable depth.
Technically (manually) a cut can be set to any power level as can a score. A score could be used to cut via the manual settings pane as can a cut could be used to make a score.
I think the point is the ‘score’ verbiage in the UI is mostly for PG materials. As this automatically sets the powers need to either do a cut (go completely thru) or score (thru the pre-mask) for that specific material. Just makes it easy for folks who has never used a pew pew before.
i.e. On the sunglass holders I used cider and pre-masked the material manually. I created a colored vector for the cuts then used a separate color as a score so I can remove that small section of the pre-mask so I can paint it.
Not a silly question - I know the current behavior is intended for a change. I don’t know what it will change to.
So @jules , when you made your knife block(s), to make the engraved part (not the inlaid pieces), did you have to have a filled silhouette of the shapes (bird body, wings, etc.) or just a silhouette outline and tell it to engrave this design. e.g.if I wanted to engrave a circle , would I need a black or solid circle or could I draw a circle and have it engrave the interior? 
@staff, please don’t “fix” our drawings for us by automagicly closing open curves so they can be engraved.
I think it would be a lot better to trust that people are capable of learning that open curves can’t be engraved than to turn everyone’s "L"s into triangles.
As stated above, in the context of laser cutters, “engraving” is achieved when the laser head is moving back and forth like an inkjet printer. I believe people, even “beginners”, are capable of learning this, so I hope the software isn’t designed to insulate people from that knowledge.
That isn’t the meaning I attribute to “engraving”. Scanning backwards and forwards is “raster” as opposed to “vector”. Anything that doesn’t go through is engraving. Score is vector engraving.
I think the current Glowforge terminology is confusing, evidenced by the fact people keep asking. Using the correct technical terms with the normal meaning: raster, vector, cut and engrave should eliminate the confusion.
“Raster” is a good word too.
Using it does add confusion when the two main image types are raster and vector though.
And the literal definitions of “engraving” or “scoring” don’t really work when talking about engraving or scoring something like anodized aluminum.
The problem is that this doesn’t work either. For instance on a laser printer, you can send a postscript bezier curve. Definitely vector and purely described as a mathematical formula. However when the RIP sends it to the laser to write onto the drum it is “rasterized”, because other than analog vector scopes (like the old Tektronix terminals - dating myself) you always have to convert to some discrete pixels, voxels or stepper-motor-steps. So vector (like DC current) is always a true impossibility (as my father a Pro of EE likes to say you never have true DC since it turned on at some point and turns off, but we all know what you mean…).
So whether the GF slicer does scanning via lines or continuous movement, it makes no difference between each method, but the source material is what matters, bitmap or vector art.
Great question! While you could probably just give the stroke a different color than the fill on the same shape, this was what I did…
I made the filled bird shape (for the engrave part) with no stroke color associated with the shape.
Then I duplicated that exactly, put it on another layer, and for the second “bird” I gave it a different stroke color, but no fill.
The filled shape was applied to the cherry background to engrave the hole.
The unfilled stroke was cut out of the veneer.
That duplication of the paths makes it easy for the Glowforge UI to recognize what I want it to do with the parts. Otherwise I’d spend a lot of time setting things to Ignore, and back to Cut and then to Engrave.
Duplicating that one set of lines just saves a lot of clicking back and forth in the interface.
As Glowforge aims to be easy to use I think the software should be written to be the least surprising to novice users. I have no experience with laser cutters or their software but I am surprised by how confusing the GF software seems to be. Here is how I would expect it to behave:
You would have four options of the operation to perform with each part of a design:
Raster engrave.
Raster engrave 3D.
Vector engrave.
Vector cut.
These terms would describe how the laser operates, not the type of file being processed. The raster engraves scan backwards and forwards and either aim to convert greyscale to tone or to depth. If you use a bitmap then it is resampled at the selected LPI. If you use a vector file like SVG then it should be rendered to a bitmap at the selected LPI and stroke width and fill should be respected just like a browser renders SVGs. What you see is what you get.
Vector engrave and vector cut draw kerf wide lines, ignore stroke width and fill (possibly giving a warning for filled shapes). The only difference between engrave and cut is whether it aims to go all the way through or not.
Closed paths and open paths should both work, the only difference being open paths engrave down the centre of the line. Closed paths offset by half the kerf.
The software should determine whether closed paths are outlines or holes and offset accordingly. The preview should colour code outlines, holes and open paths in three difference colours so you can see what will happen. By default the outermost closed paths should become outlines and then you toggle going inwards. The presence of an open path outside a closed path would flip the closed path to be a hole.
There would need to be an override because you might laser something that is already the correct shape so the top level closed paths are holes, not the outline.
What do people think? Is there anything unexpected or ambiguous if it worked this way? Calling vector engrave “score” and having “engrave” mean raster engrave seems non-obvious to me and converting an L shaped vector to a triangle is totally surprising. Not being able to vector engrave open paths also seems wrong.
This is assuming that the absolute newbie laser user (I’m also raising my hand here), knows what rastor and vector mean and the difference between the two and how a laser would react to that.
Being on this forum, I believe the definition of a vector is smooth lines that are mathematically generated, and a rastor is an image that is made up of pixels. One can be shrunk or enlarged without a problem (vector) and the other is only good at it’s intended size (introduces fuzziness and pixilation) (rastor). Given my understanding of the definitions of these terms I think you can see where I would be confused by your given “modes” of operating the laser.
If I were to say what would make the most sense without having to learn new terms I would suggest the following operations.
Cut out <-- This can be used to cut out any shape (inside or outside the image)
Shade <-- equivalent to engrave (would have options for a light, light-medium, medium, medium-dark, and dark)
Draw <-- essentially a cut that does not go through the piece
Not sure if it makes sense to differentiate engrave with 3D engrave since in my mind they are just different flavors of the same thing (how much material do you take away around the design?)
Not necessarily a critique of your comment, but just my 2 cents as a user who is less knowledgeable about lasers than yourself.
I’m not the best person to offer advice. The current implementation of Cut, Score and Engrave seemed obvious to me from the beginning. The only issue is the difference between a vector engrave and a bitmap engrave. None of the current user interface operations make a distinction between those two. But it does matter what type of file you upload for the engrave and how the Glowforge app interprets the result. That needs to either be consistent or implemented differently for clarity.
Yes cut out, shade and draw work well to describe the end result. I don’t think 3D engrave is the same as shade though. When trying to make a 2D picture you are just burning the wood by different degrees to make it go darker. 3D engraving doesn’t care about the colour, it needs to map grey scale to depth, not shade. It probably needs multiple passes and variable focus and a lot more power than shading.
A bunch of the members got together and created a quick and dirty little overview for new users who don’t understand the differences.
By the time the production units roll out in bulk, we’ll have the tutorials loaded up and everyone can get a jump on it.
Once the difference between rasters and vectors is understood, it’s pretty easy to remember.
Even a laser-dummy housewife (me) can manage it. 
That’s really all there is. After you get a handle on that, it’s a matter of what can you do with vectors vs rasters.
My students all start out with the same issue. The laser I use for training has cut/engrave/mark as its operations. There isn’t a real universal usage between manufacturers & their software except maybe cut/engrave/score and cut/engrave/mark are probably pretty close.
Since you can’t know what else someone new coming to lasers knows, you can’t come up with a set of analogous terminology that everyone will get. Just like everything new, you learn a few new terms and techniques whether it’s operating a laser or a car 
But" marking" is ambiguous because both raster engrave and vector engrave mark the material and engrave means to cut or carve on the surface of a hard object, so I don’t know how it comes to mean raster engrave while marking is vector engrave. @julybighouse’s terms are much more descriptive.
Raster engrave and vector engrave are the same thing as far as the Glowforge head motion and the same as far as the user interface. The only difference is whether you are sending a bitmap file or a vector file to the Glowforge app. The head is not moving in a line with the vectors. Just side to side, the same as the bitmap/raster engrave. Only the cut and score follow the vectors or paths.
The problems is vector engraving to me means moving the head along a vector path but to you and @henryhbk it means engraving a vector file but moving the head in a raster fashion. I don’t see how engraving implies raster motion. It doesn’t mean that in a dictionary.
So clearly the current naming is ambiguous to a layman.
Regardless of what it is called I want to be able to use an SVG file to make a picture by moving the head in a raster fashion or I want to use it to describe paths to be cut or scored. In the first instance I want stroke width and fill to be respected and in the second instance ignored.
In either case I want both open and closed paths to work as expected.
Some of this confusion comes from hijacking SVG to represent a tool path, when it is meant for storing graphical information. So it can be both a resolution independent image that needs rasterising or a tool path for the laser to follow.
The term vector engrave is on us not Glowforge. I don’t believe the user interface or any documentation mentions vector engrave. Only engrave. If you send a SVG with paths and tell it to score, it will follow the paths regardless of whether they are open or closed. It’s only if you send a SVG with paths and tell it to engrave that things could get screwy with open, closed and fills. So sounds like everything you have asked for is already there.