Feature request... or am I just being dumb?

Problems and Support
#1

I might just be missing something obvious (or not-so-obvious, like a shortcut command that you just have to know) but there doesn’t seem to be any way to reorder the elements in the app. Yeah, you can reorder the steps on the left-hand side, but that doesn’t affect the order of things in the… workspace/cutting area. I’m going to assume this doesn’t affect many people bc I haven’t seen many people complain about this, but it becomes massively inconvenient over time. If something is on the ‘bottom’, the only way to select it seems to be to move everything else that’s on top.

Ideally, if we could select something by clicking it on the left side that would be amazing! It already highlights it, so if it could just select it too, that would be great. That way, we could click it on the left side and delete it without having to hunt around for it. And click-delete is much faster than click-select drop down arrow-click ignore. And we could also bring the bottom thing to the top without moving everything to get to it. Even if we could just press a key and click it over and over to get it to cycle through all the things that are layered, that would work fine too.

If there already is a keyboard shortcut for select-the-other-thing-right-here, please let me know (and can we maybe compile a list of all the keyboard shortcuts there are that function in the UI?).

3 Likes
#2

I might be misunderstanding your concern. But when you arrange things on the left, that’s the order of operation. In other words, if you have
Cut Object 1
Engrave Object 1
Cut Object 2
Engrave Object 2

That’s the order it will happen in. So if you want, say, all of your engraves to go first, you just drag into position…
Engrave Object 1
Engrave Object 2
Cut Object 1
Cut Object 2

Does that answer your question?

1 Like
#3

Oh, yeah, I get that. I’m talking about the ordering of things on the right, the actual design, I guess. I don’t know the right terms, which would help :slight_smile:

Anything thats on the bottom isn’t clickable if theres something on top. You have to move the top thing to get to the bottom thing - to resize it, to reposition it, to delete it, etc. That’s the problem. More of an unnecessary annoyance than a problem, really. I would like for there to be a way to select the thing on the bottom without having to move anything else.

If clicking the opperation on the left physically selected the element it’s representing, it would be super helpful.

2 Likes
#4

Oh! I get what you’re saying. Here’s the thing… and some are of differing opinions on this…
I suggest you don’t want to do what you’re trying to do in the Glowforge App. That’s really just for cutting. Any design work (resizing, moving, etc.) you want to do in your design app. May mean some back and forth between apps until you get things the way you want them, but, to me, that’s far less annoying that trying to make the Glowforge App do things it’s not designed to do (or does them poorly). When you accept that the Glowforge App is just a (huge) step above a printer driver, you can work within that world. :slight_smile:

Hope that helps!!!

2 Likes
#5

Yeah, I get that it’s not a design app, but given the whole visual alignment/placement thing, you have to be able to position things visually. Which requires moving around and resizing. And those are are all things it already does perfectly fine. Same with deleting. All that functionality is already there – the only issue is being able to select the stuff you want to do that to.

2 Likes
#6

Yeah, but sometimes you add artwork, and it adds the new thing on top of the old thing, giving you this issue.

This is a very reasonable request with no downsides, IMHO.

4 Likes
#7

I get the idea of ordering the major steps, but sometimes it’s funny to watch Pewtie decide the sequence in which she goes about completing the operations with in a step. I had a bit of work with a series of holes. She cut three of them, then cut a slot, then started at the far end of the piece, cutting holes, left a gap, cut some hole over there, then came back and finished the last holes in a gap she’d left earlier.

The little thing’s got a good memory!

2 Likes
#8

Totally hear you. And I don’t disagree. And in the cases where I’ve had to move things like that, I’ve found the best way is to separate them in my design app this way I have freedom to move them as I want within the Glowforge App. I believe long ago I may have even asked that when an item is selected on the left, it’s selected on the right. So you can then nudge with arrow keys. That’d be better than nothing. But, I’ve come to live with it as-is.

Yep! I HATE that. I almost never Add Artwork, but when I do, it’s a real pain with the whole “selecting thing.” Probably why I almost never Add Artwork. Maybe 3 times in the past year and a half.

3 Likes
#9

Thank you for pointing this out, @erin. I’ve passed this feedback on to the team and let them know more information and perspective can be found here!

#10