I’ve been using this from the first. My first GF arrived in the second wave. Today I loaded my svg into the GFUI and it is NOT the right scale.
Parts outside the bed… that’s fine. I plan to cut those on another sheet. All my parts are measured and designed just right. And it scaled down when I uploaded. Scaled down so everything fits on the bed. The Wrong Size.
Obvious workaround is to make multiple files, which I don’t want to do.
Why did this happen? Who changed it? can you put it back the way it was? Please?
Occam’s Razor strongly suggests it is your file that has changed. If it were me, I would try creating a test file with just a simple square of a known size, and see how that performs.
If you can provide any more information about how you’re making these SVGs, there’s a chance someone may be able to help. If you can share a file that’s not importing correctly, even better.
Regardless, this is just a community forum, and none of us here would have the ability to change anything or put it back. If you need to reach Glowforge support, it’s probably best to call them these days.
unfortunately Adobe, in their infinite wisdom, somehow decided to “reset” that setting in an update not that long ago. annoyed the #### out of me. that’s probably what happened to @cmreeder.
thankfully, i was on a call with some other enterprise users with some Illustrator devs early this year and i was able to complain about them making that change and telling them how it broke some processes for us. and there’s another GF user who was on that call who backed me up.
Yep, I think we had some discussions here when that happened and a lot of people suddenly had similar issues.
After many years using Illustrator exclusively for Glowforge stuff, I now find myself designing web site graphics and things to be printed, so I can’t rely on my tried and true “always leave it set this way” SVG configuration, and have to check every single time.
Most software that generates SVGs is geared to on-screen use, so most of it generates files that use pixel coordinates rather than real world units such as millimeters.
The Glowforge assumes that SVGs are at 96 DPI (as that’s what most software these days uses, although older software often generated files at 72 DPI) but depending on your settings Illustrator might not create SVGs with the correct DPI scaling.
There are two other solutions to this problem (aside from double-checking all of your Illustrator settings):
Use PDF rather than SVG. PDF files are always specified in real-world units (as they were designed for printing, rather than web use) so scaling should never be an issue with PDFs. PDFs can cause some unexpected issues (such as warnings about clipping paths) but these days they tend to work pretty well with the Glowforge.
Make your SVG files exactly 20" by 12". When the Glowforge encounters an SVG file with that exact ratio (5:3), it disregards its usual assumptions about 96 DPI and instead scales the file to fit 20" by 12".
I know the old conventional wisdom was a 20 x 12 worksheet would solve the problem but I thought that pretty much went away when inscape got rid of 72DPI. They also usually recommend using a plain SVG out of inscape… I think that’s out of an abundance of caution not because there’s really a problem anymore.
I’ve never heard this aspect ratio trigger. Is that documented somewhere? If it is truly the aspect ratio that it’s looking for then let’s say you made a workspace that was 5” x 3” you’re saying that it would scale it up to be 20 x 12 and completely blow the project?
Try it yourself.* Make a 5"×3" SVG file containing a 1" square. When you upload it you’ll end up with a 4" square, because the Glowforge UI assumes it’s meant to be a 20"×12" file.
If I’d designed it I’d probably constrain it so it only did the resizing if the DPI matched certain common values (e.g., 72) or fell within a reasonable range. But as far as I’m aware it does this on any file with a 5:3 aspect ratio.
It’s a life-saver if you’re using some software that can’t export SVGs at 96 DPI. But yeah, it’s a potential footgun, especially since it’s not actually documented anywhere (aside from ancient forum posts where customer support people used to tell you to size them this way if all else failed).
* I just tested it myself, with both 10"×6" and 5"×3" files to make sure it still works this way in 2026. It does. I ended up with 2" and 4" squares, respectively.