I’ve been making some coasters here and there, and sometimes I’ll go through a few sizes for various uses, whether it be a coffee cup or a trivit. But generally, I’ll take a vector design and just resize it.
Since the GFUI lets you resize, it’d be nice to be able to hold a hotkey so that dragging the corner resize nodes snaps to common ruler positions, perhaps every 1/16th of an inch (or every millimeter) – choosable by the user, preferably.
or just be able to type in a # for width or height and have it scale to that #.
Yes, but that wouldn’t help with trying to evenly space out multiple copies. Say I had a 4" design and wanted a 1" gap between multiples. I want to snap all the copies to the ruler in that situation.
ok, yes, for spacing out that would help. i was thinking about resizing. i’d like to be specific about scaling.
Fair enough. Honestly, it needs both IMO… So I guess it’s two feature requests. lol
This may have just been beaten into me by other forum posts. 
At this point, I just keep a copy of my svg’s in all the standard sizes that I need. Once a coaster is done, it’s easy enough to just save it 4 times back to back with different fixed sizes.
The spacing would be neat, I personally would prefer that the UI had built in deterministic vector nesting to maximize material usage. I’ve been using SVGnest for this quite extensively.
Just wondering is there any particular reason you would want to space something using a fixed amount?
Yes, sure, you could do that. It’s easy enough if you have the design software readily handy. Sometimes I don’t. I have a workstation at the far end of my condo with design software on it, and a laptop near the Glowforge.
While automated renesting is cool and all, I don’t think it belongs in the GFUI. Not to mention that it’s a relatively complicated add for them to integrate. In my head, that’s something best left to an Inkscape / Illustrator plugin, or a pre-processing script.
The reason I’d want to snap to ruler ticks is because it can make a multi-part score or etch easier to align to, say, the top or sides of other shapes. Heck, I’d also accept being able to align multiple operations (ie. “align left edges” “align top edges” and “align centered”)
My suggestion was that you save the standard sizes up front. Which means you don’t need the design software. I understand the desire to tweak sizes in the GFUI, still, its best left to design software. Depending on how you synchronize files between computers I can understand how it could be frustrating starting at the GFUI and not being able to tweak the files due to them being located remotely.
As for having the software immediately available, I’m not sure what systems you are using so I don’t know what issues you may be having there. I am being forced to boot into windows far more then I would like as Fusion 360 doesn’t run in Linux. 
I used to be with you on this one, though have recently gone to the dark side, alignment should be done in design software, not the GFUI. It’s easier to align precisely, its saved locally, it’s reusable, it simplifies the layout process, it’s scalable, etc. With how freely available and easy tools like Inkscape make it importing and reusing SVG’s I no longer see a need to have it in the GFUI.
As for nesting, it’s a surprisingly simple problem to solve, its actually a typical software engineering interview question. Regardless, I don’t see it as a feature that is needed anytime soon. It can be done locally and without knowing if their implementation is deterministic it could make printing harder. On top of all that I already have a CI system set up to handle post-processes for my designs and adding them to source control. 
Fair enough. Everyone has their workflow that works best for them, but the way you describe doesn’t work well for me.
This post wasn’t meant to be a “how can I do this in design software” request – I know I can make multiple sizes myself – it was to request a feature for the hopper that would be of benefit to users.
I completely understand and as we each slowly discover our unique workflows it will likely influence the features they target making everything better for everyone over time.
Thanks so much for all the suggestions! I’ve shared them with the team.