I am a CAD designer with more than 20years experience, and when I purchased my machine I had no idea that I was going to have to learn all new software or purchase a license for the native glowforge software, I opted to pay for the subscription, however it is SO HARD TO SEE I cannot use it!!!
I would like to suggest to @rebekah that you develop a “camera space” view tab and a “design space” view tab. I would also like to suggest that you make the scroll wheel zoom in and out of the camera view, and press down center mouse and it is pan. I think that these small changes would be immensely helpful and reduce the learning curve of this machine. As it stands it is NOT easy to design, draw or learn when you cannot see the screen.
I started as a Cad designer in the 1980s before Autocad had 3D and found myself working in many graphic systems. A key difference is cad’s connection to defined arcs and straight lines that is mechanical, while the other graphic systems take a different more organic approach that I called “squishy” used by most art based programs. In general the Glowforge leans toward the “squishy” side.
Technically, Premimum is not a program in the sense of cad, but a set of tools that add greatly to the power of achieving a result with the free catalog, Magic Canvas, increased storage, etc leading the list. But all the basic stuff works without premium.
You can also do your regular cad stuff and turn out a pdf and that will print fine. Like any program you have to learn where the widgets are and what they do. I have premium but most of my work is still done in Inkscape, and Gimp that are both open source which the expense is learning the widgets and not monthly cash that is the case with Adobe etc.
If you have your cad program and have your market defined like building mechanical devices, or architectural models, you might not find that premium is worth it. But if you have a market booth selling the results of your Glowforge, premium will pay for itself hundreds of times over. Between those two extremes will be between those extremes.
You do not need to purchase anything to use your Glowforge. The interface has been improving/changing over the past 8 years and certain features are offered in a Premium subscription. Many users have never subscribed as it is totally optional. Zoom in and you can see quite clearly what is going on. If you need more contrast, you can change the color scheme or place a piece of white paper on the bed.
Well that may be true, it would be a great idea to be able to just flip it to a neutral background. It should be really easy to implement, it’s just a CSS change.
I’m pretty sure @chris1 wrangled something to make this work. If it wasn’t him, somebody talked about how they had done it using some sort of extension to modify the page.
Oh gods no - it’s one of the things I hate the the most when I use CAD software. Almost every product on the web scrolls up/down with the mouse wheel.
@chris1’s add-on is a great option, but also you can change the line colours by clicking on the 3 dot menu, and selecting “Preferences”. I go with High Contrast.
Especially with your background, you might be happier using actual design software to do your designing. And just use the Glowforge interface for the actual cutting/engraving.