Frustraighting!

[jestelle]

@Whtimiswhtugt

measurements needed to fit each spoon and it’s position

I imagine you might need a jig of some sort to get the alignment right on the spoons anyway, yes?

If you wanna screenshot your GFUI to give us a better sense of what you’re trying to do, you might get some good advice.

Cheers!

[Whtimiswhtugt]

That’s how it always was for me, but today it said I had a lot of elements and they’ve been grouped. I went back and selected 12 from all over the file, copy/pasted to a new document, and then exported again. It again said the items were grouped. I tried to move one and they all move

[Whtimiswhtugt]

[Whtimiswhtugt]

This was the last project I did, nothing is grouped here including the word itself. I exported it as an SVG but the words are just outlines.

[evansd2]

@ekla

magic threshold

@jestelle

voodoo magic

I agree it looks like that but it’s not magic, but math and science

As I understand it (I reserve the right to be mistaken, correct me if I am):

The key concept is something called a hull group. Basically every open shape and every closed shape that is enclosed or is overlapping with other closed shapes is called a hull group. When you have too many hull groups you get automatically grouped, and then you’re stuck with it.

I tested the limit in February 2020 since Glowforge wouldn’t tell us, it seems that it was 200. As in it doesn’t automatically group in the UI if it is up to and including 200 hull groups.

Here are my two test files, one with 200 stars, and one with 201. 200 is a nice even number, too clean of a result for me to think it’s a coincidence, and too clean for me to think it’s not a bit arbitrary – meaning it feels like some human said “What should the limit be? I dunno, 200?”

Not grouped (200 stars):

Grouped (201 stars):

Now let me add some complexity to them and see if that changes things.

I doubled the complexity of the inclusions (added more “1’s”) and it still didn’t automatically group, so it does appear to be grouping only based on “how many overlapping hull path groups do you have?”

Ungrouped, complex inner paths, 200 items:

So, that’s that. I really don’t like the grouping feature, but from what I gather it’s a performance thing.

As for this:

@PrintToLaser

just position the whole bunch with the element in focus positioned where I wanted it.

This doesn’t always work with the type of grouping we’re talking about. Once it gets grouped by the auto hull count threshold, it’s all considered one giant object. If any part of your group is outside the cuttable area, you’re sunk.

And as for this:

@Whtimiswhtugt

Because it’s easier for me to do it in the GFI.

I suspect that there are workflows that would be great for you in external design software, what you’re describing seems very simple for me to do in Inkscape, but IDK. The bottom line is that you should be able to do this without it grouping in the UI, because The grouping feature is pure evil in a bucket.

On the other hand, if you did it in the external program and then combined your paths as appropriate, you would be far below the 200 hull group limit and this would probably not automatically group on you.

[Whtimiswhtugt]

Evil is correct

I use Adobe Illustrator for the majority of my stuff. Everything I do with it is self-taught mainly from youtube and lots of searching for the name of the tool or feature I’m looking for lol. I’m not a scientific type (not that I don’t want to be lol) so much of that stuff is hard to understand when you don’t know what something else is. Geesh I can’t even figure out a mitered corner (true story lol). I do have a better understanding than I did before. And will try some other things Thank you for your help and explanations

[deirdrebeth]

I’m wondering if you uploaded the shapes as a separate design from the words whether you’d get under the Not grouped (200 stars) threshold that @evansd2 noted. Also if you Combine/Union your words each one would be only 1 element instead of 1 element per letter…worth a shot!

[Whtimiswhtugt]

the words were grouped, I ungrouped them and exported again, it didn’t change anything. I tried a PNG file and it still grouped them. I did find a fix though

[Whtimiswhtugt]

[deirdrebeth]

Grouping and combining are very different things. Grouping is just a visual overlay - combine is a boolean command that literally makes it one object.

[Whtimiswhtugt]

yeah I haven’t played with those things much yet. I can play with pathfinder in AI. thank you for the tip

[deirdrebeth]

Oh hey - I just ran across this - possibly helpful!

Quick overview of grouped files and compound path files

Made a quick video showing how to make edits to grouped files or compound path files. Hope it helps some people out: [How to edit grouped and compound path laser files in Illustrator]

[Whtimiswhtugt]

I watched that before I posted my post it didn’t solve my problem at the time, but knowing how to edit a compound path would be helpful. I’ll watch it again thank you

[jestelle]

This makes me wonder if you rasterized all of this text before you uploaded it?
So it actually got uploaded as one big bitmap. This would make it impossible to separate each piece.

[Whtimiswhtugt]

didn’t work, but I could have done it wrong too lol. the only time I rasterize something is when I can’t get other things to work while trying to seperate something lol.

[Whtimiswhtugt]

IT DID WORK Originally I tagged them all and rasterized them, I was thinking maybe doing each one would work instead so I did.

I just uploaded it to the other testing GFI lol. but it worked… THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU

[jestelle]

Yay! Glad you found a workflow that works!

[Whtimiswhtugt]

Me too

[ekla]

Yup, shapes that look like words are still shapes. GF doesn’t understand externally generated text (outside the GFUI text tool).