Glowforge UI Screenshot!

Here’s the thing… we read all the questions even if we don’t have time to compose thoughtful answers, and they inform our progress, which is wonderful. So don’t stop! And while I know for a fact that @Tony’s been busy as Glowforge chaperone, I bet he’ll get back in here and scoop up a few of these questions soon.

As to engrave-and-cut order, that’s an interesting one. While it’s true that cutting can cause warped material to drop down lower and move out of focus, we can always re-auto-focus. But engraving removes the protective paper, meaning a subsequent cut will discolor the final product. Cutting first, then engraving, can produce a better surface finish. So we’ve been playing with both approaches. Some of the conventional wisdom gets turned around when you have more knobs to play with. :slight_smile:

Oh, and as Tony mentioned above, you can drag-and-drop reorder the steps if you don’t like the defaults.

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I may have misspoken: there’s a bunch of stuff happening that many of you would find fascinating, but isn’t the type of information we’ve decided to share - work relating to making existing functionality reliable and scalable, the discussion of which tends to touch closely on trade secrets.

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I think most of us anticipated that, but it sure is good to hear it from you.

Seems unusual for you to be around here in daylight. I hope you and Tony weren’t compelled to drop everything to put out fires around here. Still, we needed the tranquilizer.
Thanks!

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Ha! On a plane with spotty wifi, flying home from visiting the in-laws. I figured there’d be a lot of chatter today so I’ll be online for a bit answering questions as I see them.

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Ha! That’s excellent! I figured it wouldn’t work well but still awesomely hilarious, and as close to a real light saber as you can possibly get.

Man I love the internet sometimes! I’m always amazed just how much information can be gleaned from one single photo/screenshot.

Let’s see… the second step, marked “engrave”, has the option “engrave by shade” chosen. Underneath that, there are four colors (“shades”) and the rightmost one, ~black, seems to be highlighted/selected. Below that are three radio buttons, and “both” has been chosen.

Looking at the coaster, the bird and its outline match that black color. That makes sense since it would probably be optimal to engrave the filled bird area as a raster and the thin outline as a vector.

OK, speculation time… (sorry if I get some things COMPLETELY wrong… I’ve never even seen a laser cutter in person)
I’m thinking the user will be able to click on each color in the list, and make a selection from the radio buttons below. In other words, in the screenshot ~black is selected and its corresponding engrave-type, both, has been selected, if the leftmost color, which I’ll call dark brown, was clicked on, the radio button might change to “raster”.

If my speculation is close to reality, I’m thinking it might be beneficial to have an icon or marker of some kind attached to each color/“shade” to signify which type of engraving is being employed. So in my speculative example, it seems like it could be helpful if the “dark brown” box had a little “raster” icon in it; like a little grid pattern icon or an “R” or something.
Better yet, a column of three radio buttons arranged below each color would be nice (top button = raster, middle button = vector, and the bottom = both). This would remove the need to click on the color before being able to modify the option, saving… maybe one whole entire second! I could also see this column of radio buttons making user-error slightly less probable. Lastly, it would give the user an “at a glance” idea of what is going to happen after clicking the “Zap” button.
Oh, seems like there should be a “neither” option as well, for colors the user wishes to skip.

With this particular image I’m having trouble differentiating between the colors. Perhaps the software could have an “enhance” option that would change the colors in the preview workarea and in the UI so they’re unmistakably different. So, the color I think looks black would be changed to red, the “dark brown” would be changed to blue, the darker brown would become green, and the darkest brown would become cyan. “Enhancing” the image would make it look less pretty, but it seems like it could be very helpful. For instance, it looks like the dots are… “dark brown”… maybe… and they seem to have a little “darker brown” highlights, and I’m guessing the outer outline is “darkest brown”. I’d hate for my inability to distinguish between the darker and darkest browns to translate into selecting raster for the outline and vector for the highlights in the dots.

Further, the raster lines could be differentiated in some way. Perhaps they could be animated with a moving dashed line, similar to they way the boundaries of selected areas are shown in image editors.

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Thats what I thought of just after I posted that statement…duh…we have a camera that can refocus…lol
Its going to be hard to not think lesser of my existing lasers as lacking the bells and whistles of the Glowforge. :yum:

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Thank you for posting this one of the main things I hope to do is allot of dove tails. so I hope this confirms that

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You have my full amd undivided attention. Just as excited as the first day I ordered and found this inspiring community.
Let’s light this puppy.

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The hand turkey is a long-time inside joke at the office. It’s the first thing I cut with the trace feature when it was under development. I’m pretty sure I have it around here somewhere.

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If I accidentally made a Rick Astley coster… I would never give it up.

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I LOVE that song :slight_smile:

I have been quietly excited to get my Glowforge. I CAN BE SILENT NO MORE!!! When I came across the crowdfunding campaign I thought “This is cool…” Something really clicked as I watched the promos and ideas that were at work. My Wife and I decided to go ahead and make the investment, believing that it would make a great addition to our small business and open up new possibilities. As I have watched the progress and the interesting interactions with other “GLOWSMITHS” (I like this title) I have been impressed with the people involved. You guys are my kind of people. Yes the anticipation is killer, however, I KNOW that when I receive my machine it will be everything I expected and more. Sooo… Good on ya “GLOW MASTERS” Glow ahead and do that thing you do… Patiently Waiting … Is it done yet??? … How bout now??? NOW??? :wink:

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Don’t make me turn this car around! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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oh gods no, please!! we’ve all been waiting too long to turn back now!!!

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Dips on vertexforge

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I see we have some “Portlandia” fans, since you put a bird on it.

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This gif makes me feel old lol, I remember buying the first home computer and it feels like yesterday. I was also remember my first cellphone, back when they sold them by 100 minute a month plans and no such thing as texting. Now I am buying a freaking laser cutter to put in my man cave. Seems crazy to me in my lifetime how fast things have advanced. Thanks to minds like @dan and his staff, what used to be sci-fi is, is about to be in my house!

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I seem to have missed the “engrave by shade” thread. Is this supposed to be an approximate view of the colour the material will turn to? Or does this control halftone grey scales at the touch of a button? Will we have greyscale engrave control? (This is a feature I adore in Universals.)

Also, I’m going to second the engrave then cut movement and am really glad that I’ll be able to reset the default to… my… default… Whatever. I’ve had too many items catch on fire to go from cut (the fire maker) to engrave. It’s a lense safety thing for me.

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