Tips? Cuss. A LOT. 
I actually donât have a lot of experience with Inkscape (bare minimum I would say) but I thought I would be able to open the PDF in the software, save it as an SVG, and (boom!) be done with it. I donât know what software he uses, but it wasnât that easy at all. When I opened the file I found that there wasnât even one complete shape - even the stitching holes were in four pieces! For some reason Inkscape wouldnât allow me to weld (I donât know what itâs actually called in Inkscape, sorry) the lines into shapes. Because I was on a time crunch I actually paid someone to convert it for me. Because this was my first project I thought I knew what I was doing - turns out I shouldâve watched the video a few more times. I was able to adjust the file after it was converted, but it was pretty tense for a few days.
I did get help from one person who suggest this online converter. By far the best one I tried (and I tried several) even if it wasnât perfect. If, like me, you decide to pay someone to do it, I highly recommend Bradley at The Graphics Joint. He was an absolute prince to work with!
Sorry Iâm not a lot of help on the technical end. I feel like Iâm at the very beginning of a long, steep learning curve!
Thanks. I actually took one of the leather plans and put it into the online converter you suggested. It quickly made it into the SVG format and broke it out into several pages just as the plans are already. I then brought them into Boxy SVG which is a free SVG program like Inkscape, but way more scaled back and simple. The intent was it was supposed to be easier to use and more of a quick pick up. I was able to learn it much faster than Inkscape, though I am certain I do not know all of it and it does not have all of the Inkscape features, but once I opened it up in Boxy, I was able to quickly figure out how to delete the nodes which contained all of the stuff we donât want for printing. Once I had a clean page, I brought it into the Glowforge and it looks great. I have not printed it yet, but plan on doing a small one this Monday or Tuesday to try it outâŚmaybe the free glasses case or something. Anyway, at this point, I think it is going to work out greatâŚI hope any way. Thanks again for the information pointing me to that conversion software!
Excellent! I havenât heard of Boxy - maybe I should look into that. That converter was truly the best Iâve used - pretty sure itâs going to be my go to from now on. Best of luck with the print, canât wait to see it!
Looks good!
Absolutely beautiful! Have you done any other leatherwork since then? I just recently got a large stash of small pieces of leather and am going to start at the earring level and mug wraps to start with. I would love to see anything you have created in leather since 2018!
Wonderful! I used to do leatherwork by hand, and having the GF to get more precise cuts is terrific.