Here is a link to another topic to read through to get a fairly good introduction to the process and what using the cloud entails. To sum up some of the points as I understand it:
- Our own designs will be kept private unless we want to share them.
- You need an active internet connection to use the Glowforge
- There will be designs available for free and for pay from Glowforge and the community.
- The cloud infrastructure is such that it will scale to handle any workload thrown at it.
- The cloud part of the Glowforge is a great plus because it means that Glowforge doesn’t have to write software for multiple computer architectures. This makes updates easier and faster to roll out, among other plus points.
- The cloud part of the Glowforge has potential downsides in that internet access is necessary and folks will have to factor this in to the workflow.
- Another downside of the cloud aspect is that there is the possibility of with a future sale of the company, or heaven forbid the company goes away, the servers will be turned off and the operational software will no longer function. That is when the Glowforge user community would kick in and resurrect the hardware with some new software.
That’s just a few of the things I can think of that have been hashed over and over in the forums.
Will the designs input to the Glowforge be stored on the Cloud?