Edit a file to score instead of engrave

Hi all you super smart Glowforge friends!
I have a file for a puzzle that I have been making. (I’ll attach the file, this will make more sense when you can see it.) The original file for the pieces were image files that I traced into Inkscape. I have been doing an engrave for the hand shapes, and it takes FOREVER. But I do like how it looks.
I tried switching to scoring the lines, but it seems that it does two lines. Like the shape has a thickness and it is scoring each side of that thickness? Does this make any sense at all?

Anyway, if someone knows of an easy way to get it to just be one line instead of two that would be super awesome.

Thank you!!!
ASL Alphabet TEST

It’s not so much that it is two lines as that it is filled solids that look like lines. When you score that, it traces the outline of the object, which will look like it scoring in the same place twice unless you are working at a really large size. That is, each “line” in your original was traced with a vector path on each side of the line to create an object that maintained the character of the original “line.”

Note that anything you do to simplify to a single path will likely remove some of the character of the lines. That might not matter, depending on how small you are working.

To get what you are describing, you probably wanted to do a “centerline” trace on the original art. That is likely an option in whatever software you used to do the trace.

Someone else may have a suggestion for some simpler approach to adjusting your existing SVG.

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ASL Alphabet TEST_4scorelines_v2

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If you use @rpvalk’s centerline traced image with the score function, do a defocussed score to get a wider score line. To do that, set a manual material height that is at least 1/8” or 3mm higher than your material thickness.

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You mention this is part of a puzzle however if you look at the line I have an arrow pointing to you will see it is going to cut that loop part off from the outline of the hand.

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Yes, the pieces are cut from one piece of wood and that loop part is cut out as a spot to be able to pull the piece out. Here’s a picture of a completed puzzle.
Screenshot 2021-12-02 104421

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Oh yeah, got yeah lol. :+1:

Thank you for explaining what is going on! That makes sense now.
Unfortunately I thought I had traced this one (as I do with most of my files) but I looked and found that I actually purchased SVG files for the hand shapes. So it’s already a shape made of solids that look like lines.
I might just keep engraving it for now to save my sanity. I’m not super great at editing SVG files yet :slight_smile:

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Can you explain how you made that edit? I tried cutting it and it might work, but I would have to change all the other letters of the alphabet as well in my main file! Thanks!!

create a single line file from it and create 3 more lines with a 0,1mm offset.
and clean up the file there are lots of dubble lines and bits and pieces

How do you create the single line file? I’m not super good at SVG files yet. Did you use Inkscape?

the file that you post has an dubble line (parallel line or offset line) so delete one line. Clean up the graphic and make sure you kill all the dubble lines on top of each other and create as many offset line as you need.
I used Autocad but you can do it in Inkscape too

Here’s a quick walk-through - you’ll see you can easily delete some lines, but others you’d need to make decisions about…

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