I am pretty sure this is something you can do in a software program, BUT… I am not well versed in software to do this. It seems like you “should” be able to “crop” the pieces out that you want to cut, but I don’t know how to make the software do it… any suggestions are greatly appreciated!
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Yes very easily, if it consists of individual parts. You can just select a few and copy them into another file in outside design software. Or, if you want to just do it in the Glowforge interface, simply select a few pieces and drag them off of the artboard. Anything that falls over the gray striped zones at the edges will not be cut or engraved. When you get ready for them on another sheet of material, you can just move them back onto the artboard, and drag a few other pieces off.
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ok, so say this piece i want to ultimately have all the pieces for are say 6 pieces total. If I drag them as many as I can cut to each "cutting " field I would just keep dragging the pieces around until I get all of the pieces cut out that I need to make my object?
Yep. I do it all the time. The Zoom tool is your friend, or you can CTRL+scroll with a mouse wheel and that zooms in and out. Just drag the parts that you don’t need to cut on that sheet of material off of the artboard and move them back on when you load a new sheet.
If you say it is so, I am going on your experience… I am gonna go try it… Wish me luck!
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Good luck! 
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so i have it kind of “separated”. I have a slight problem though. The pieces are placed really close together and I can’t, not grab parts of the other piece. Is there a way to only grab a whole piece at a time?
big BRITE light bulb!!! IFINALLY figured it out… oh I am doing the happy dance for sure!! Thanks for your help!!
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Anything completely enclosed inside of a closed shape will usually travel as one unit…and I see you figured it out, so have fun!
yes, I think I have. only one slight reservation. In the little window where yo set the settings for power and speed… It does not show the shape of what is on the “cut area” in the white area that represents the cutting field. It is showing a piece of the design that I have dragged off the white area, is this “normal” or should the shapes that I have on the white area be showing up there?
The thumbnails in the column on the left don’t change. So they will show the original layout.
alrighteee then… I will give this a try in the morning…
Thanks again for your help!
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Another important point… Undo is your friend. I usually put the whole design outside the cut area and drag in what I want to cut. that way I can undo and the piece goes back and I can take out a different piece. Thus with fewer moves there are fewer undos.
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thanks, that is what I did. that part has worked fabulously…now we are working on getting the depth set right to cut all the way thru the piece of wood. but we are getting that under control too, I think.
With every new sort of wood I make one of these first thing
As you have a collection of them they make an easy reference for cutting depth or engrave settings
yes, we are doing this with each project we do. we are just working thru this one to then add it to our notebook.
Thank you for your forethought!
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