Glowforge Material Manager Chrome Extension

Would be very surprised if anyone on the GF S/W development team is using or has even installed the Chrome Material Manager Extension. Could be wrong. But don’t see them spending any time testing against it.

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Hahaha – good one!!! :rofl::rofl::rofl:

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Thanks so much. I have yet to install the extension. Just am so used to changing settings for whatever material that it doesn’t make much of a difference to me. I had to deal with changing interfaces and power profiles and a slowly powering down of the pre-release I had. But if you can get it to work again, I’ll install. I so admire folks with these skills and such generosity!

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i would be surprised if someone there hadn’t at least tried it out. but i would be even more surprised if they spent time testing new releases against it.

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The main reason for my thought is because an ability to save personal material settings is a high priority to the users and likely in the official plan. Yeah every new capability is taking far longer than we think it should. But that aside a single browser capability isn’t all that useful for a long term plan.

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i don’t disagree with that at all. but i still think someone there has tried it. it’s not like there are 150 extensions that people have created and there’s just not time to try them all. afaik, this is the only extension created and it fills a void that the GFUI ought to cover. so i would think that not only would someone have checked it out, there could be people there using it to make their lives easier. maybe not in a production environment, but they get playtime as well.

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I think it’s a far stretch to expect Glowforge to test and fix something that impacts a 3rd party’s extension.

AutoDESK, Adobe, Corel, 3D Systems and all sorts other more matured software companies don’t fix their apps when they break a 3rd party plugin via an update. They might offer support to help the 3rd parties fix THEIR apps.

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even then, the biggest difference is those companies have APIs that those 3rd party plugins work with. and they get advanced notice when those APIs change. GF doesn’t have an API, this was a generous user who shared his solution with us, but it was created completely on his own.

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We officially support everything described in the user manual.

I don’t know that anyone at Glowforge uses this plugin, but we appreciate everything our customers share to make the Glowforge experience better. Whether or not we use it, or can find time to help with it, or even if we accidentally break it - we recognize that it’s a generous and caring thing that people in our community do for each other.

Please do note that support for saved material settings is something we’ve said we plan to add to Glowforge software since the very start.

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I do wish you guys would prioritize this as it’s a simple ask. I would also like to see a basic developer API show up in the near future so that those of us with more technical chops could start building supported 3rd-party tools.

Not to speculate here, though I have been turning my like minded friends away from this product because it feels like :glowforge: is trying to push this feature out as long as possible to realize more profits from :proofgrade: materials.

I really want to love this product though it’s impossible to use if you have 20-30 different material types that you like to rotate through for different projects.

Seriously though, it could be done in a single hack day just saying. :smile:

Maybe we could even pair, I spend most of my days on Zoom working in VSCode Live Share sessions :wink:

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Please implement that support for custom materials in the near future :slight_smile: . Here - outside the US - we can not even purchase PG-Materials at the moment :cry: and even if we could, with shipping and taxes they would be to expensive to order :heavy_dollar_sign::dollar:

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After reading through the threads from today all I can say is that there is no reason to be angry. I’m impressed the plugin worked so well, for so long without needing major updates.

It looks like something was changed with how the values are translated by the UI. I’m hopeful that it will just require a few tweaks to a couple math routines to get it working again.

…and remember Glowforge could have put an end to the plugin at any point if they wanted to, they chose not too so that’s something :slight_smile:

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I have gotten great value from using this extension with proofgrade materials. Thank you so much! Hopefully they know it will be helpful for :proofgrade: customers as well. Hopefully their update that’s breaking this means they’re working on it now.

So you speculating after all. :thinking:

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Of course! It’s like when people say “don’t take this the wrong way”. It is always taken the wrong way :stuck_out_tongue:

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Just a moment ago I watched a comedy sketch where the host decreed…

From this moment forward, the phrase “no offense” is banned. It shall be replaced with a more honest phrase, “I’m about to insult you to your face”.

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Believe me, the next thing I say is guaranteed to be a lie.

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tckehz

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You really should give it a try (if fixed). Once you get the workflow down, it saves a lot of time. I’ve been able to save numerous settings for a specific material (e.g. cork coaster) and create presets for various effects that vary by project with names that I recognize.

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I for one am very grateful that its been working up to now… and even more grateful that you’d be prepared to spend your own free time trying to fix it! hopefully glowforge will implement and include your material manager ( or at least a version of it) soon. Like someone above said its far to expensive to import proofgrade so i can only user materials i can source locally.

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