How do I make the Glowforge cut out something rather than just engrave?

I want to know how to cut out a square and rectangle around something that I just engraved. Does anyone know how I can?

I got the answer to my question Thanks Tom_A !

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Sure. Just take your favorite vector drawing application (Illustrator, Inkscape, etc.) and draw a rectangle of the correct size. Save it as an SVG. Open up that SVG in the GFUI and make sure the operation is set to Cut (it might already be). Align it as best you can visually. GO!

In the future, you’ll want to do this all in one step. Open your engrave in your vector drawing app, and draw the rectangle around it. Save the whole thing as an SVG, embedding the image you want to engrave. They’ll show up as 2 operations in the GFUI. Ensure your engrave is set to engrave and your cut is set to cut. Then there’s no chance of misaligning the cut versus the engrave… they’ll be one file.

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Using either Illustrator or Inkscape I found it handy to have a file that has different default shapes of a cut line, a circle, square and rectangle. Just the shapes as strokes, no fill.
The best solution is as Tom said, make the shape part of your file in the design software. The glowforge sees different colors as separate operations, so make your cut line a different color than the rest of your file, and it will show in the user interface as its own operation.

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I think having some basic shapes available from within the Glowforge app would be beneficial for instances such as this. I’ve made a couple files for my own use (Square, Rectangle, horizontal and vertical lines) for those times I forget to add to design itself. Then you can just pull it into the program. The program allows you to resize these vector files so could be esp good for newbies as well.

@dan should look into this.

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This is in the works. Zero idea on time line.
For now you can put several of your shapes into one file and make them different colors. Then you can turn the one you need on and everything else off.

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This does not work for me (or im doing it wrong). When i save my outline to SVG, and open it in the GF, no image file shows up to be printed/cut.

The vector outline needs to have a stroke color applied. Vectors with no stroke and no fill are ignored.

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ahh, ok… ill try that, thanks :wink:

@ousniper, yep… Sorry I didn’t say that explicitly. Everything the 'forge does is by color. So if you want a section to use engrave settings of 1000/50/340, make that section color1. If you want another section to be cut, make that color2, etc.

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Funny reading this, as a few times I’ve noticed that part of my design does not show up at all in the UI, so when I go back to the ‘drawing board’ I see that the stroke line has no width at all assigned to it…therefore, it does not exist. An easy fix, but something that can be overlooked before trying to send it to be engraved/cut.

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