Help with loading and preparing designs

I have been trying to load and cut files for the last 24 hours. I had troubles loading at first and have broken the file down into 3 files to print seperately even though each should have a cut time of less than 30 minutes. I have literally been working on this for hours. Now the smaller design will load, but the glowforge will not prepare the design.

I have cleared cookies, restarted browser, restarted computer, turned off glowforge.

What else can I do?? I need to finish these designs like yesterday.

If you want to Zip the file and then upload it here someone might be able to spot something. What design program are you using?

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marketplace row 2.pdf (2.8 MB)

I am using affinity designer.marketplace row 2.pdf.zip (2.8 MB)

there are some clipping masks, which are no good. The Pugs are stroked, instead of being filled.
But mainly there are just a whole lot of nodes in the drawings, and that’s what I expect is hanging things up. I would either rasterize the pink drawings, or simplify/smooth them if Affinity has such a function.
Using the simplify function in AI, I was able to quickly cut the file down quite a bit, from 215,233 nodes down to 46,577 nodes. Thats a lot better… but the file is still 2.2 mb.marketplace row 2_jbv.pdf (2.2 MB)

Rasterizing the drawings makes for a much smaller file, which will in turn process faster. It also solves the number of open paths that I saw, which may have caused issues when engraving.
marketplace row 2_jbv_raster.pdf (513.5 KB)

I don’t have your karate font installed. You will likely want to make sure you convert the text to curves/outlines before sending it to the GF.

2 Likes

Agree with everything @jbv said. I also practiced a bit and rasterized the drawings in Inkscape and converted to an SVG.

Raster.zip (104.4 KB)

Thanks for the answer, @jbv. There is a problem with our software in handling very complex files, and it looks like that’s what’s happening here.

I took a look at the file you sent over, and I see that the design includes a large number of individual nodes. I recommend using design software to reduce the number of nodes in your more complex design elements before trying again.

I will keep this thread open for now - let us know if your issue is resolved!

Thank you.

Thank you

I’m glad you resolved it! I’m going to close this thread. If you run into any other trouble, please start a new topic, or email us at support@glowforge.com. We’re here to help!