How do you reopen the app window?

Except I almost never use the CNC’s 0,0 because that’s the corner of the bed & I’d have a whole side of my material unsecured to the bed. I always reset to a relative 0,0 by moving the spindle to a place on my material which is secured using clamps somewhere in the field of the bed. As a result I’m eyeballing my placement even with a CNC :slightly_smiling_face:

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That’s why I used pictures–so terminology wouldn’t be an issue. It really doesn’t matter what you call things. What matters is making best use of the available workflow.

Here’s the workflow:

  1. Go to app.glowforge.com

  2. Open a project. There are two ways to do this:

  • Upload/drag in a new file, which creates and opens a new project
  • Click on an already existing project
  1. Change settings / placement as needed

  2. Run the job

If you choose to eliminate opening existing projects from your workflow because one time a long time ago it didn’t work the way you expected, you’re severely crippling the flexibility and utility of the system. Maybe it would be worth just trying it. If you’re right and it doesn’t work, you can say “I told you so.” If it does work, you’ve eliminated a whole lot of unnecessary frustration from your life. :slight_smile:

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Thank you so much for the thoughtful feedback about positioning and the crumb tray. I’ve captured it all, and I’ll make sure the team gets it.

Like @Jules, @geek2nurse, and @jbmanning5 have mentioned, all changes you make to your designs, including placement and settings, will be saved in the app. If you’d like to revisit a design after closing the browser window, simply choose the design from the Dashboard (the list of designs at app.glowforge.com) and it will open with your design placement and settings just as you left them!

If you find that is not the case and things are missing or are not as you left them, please let me know right away so I can investigate.

Does that answer your question? Please let me know if I’m not understanding or if there’s anything I’ve missed!

I do appreciate everybody’s attempt to help. Just a bit frustrated that people were telling me things I already knew. As I guessed, and despite what people have said, it seems there is no way to reopen the window showing the active job (this is the thing showing what is currently being cut on the GF, whatever name you give it). If the browser tab/window showing the active job is closed, it is gone. This means you are not back to where you left off — you can’t see progress or the timer, and you can’t cancel the job without going to your GF and lifting the lid. I would really like to see this changed, and I’m sure others would as well. If I’ve missed a magic button somewhere, please correct me. Note to @jaz: This is what I was looking for and now I know it doesn’t do it; please consider this a feature request.

If you reopen the “app” (go to app.glowforge.com) and click on the most recent project, it will show you the project, but it will not show you the bed image until after the current job is complete.

Yes, it does seem to save settings now, but this isn’t obvious because it doesn’t save your material selection. If you haven’t already loaded proofgrade material with a visible QR code, it will show no settings at all until you choose a material. This is why I thought it still wasn’t saving settings. I would call this a bug.

I know the persistent auto save is a feature, but I also know it confuses people. You can have many projects with the same name, with no indication of what makes them different (Word doesn’t have this issue). I could see saving projects being useful for people who do the same thing many, many times over a long period of time. That’s not my workflow and, apparently, it’s not what many people expect it to do. Given that the settings are saved, I can see myself opening the same project I just used, and not leaving my GF on overnight unnecessarily now, but I would never trust a project I used days or weeks ago. Among other things, an update in the GF app could have made my project change unexpectedly.

On (x,y) positioning: I don’t want it to use for initial positioning, I only want it for repeatability. I can duplicate an (x,y) position exactly. I can’t drag to the same location exactly. There are a variety of reasons why this would be useful. Notice they added visible rulers recently. So you can sort of get (x,y) positioning, it’s just not very accurate. On the point of the Glowforge system — I thought it was to be the easiest to use laser cutter (uh, 3D laser printer), not to be a device limited by the fact that it has a camera. The camera should enable, not limit. BTW, with respect to the comment by @jbmanning5, (x,y) coordinates should relate to both the crumbtray and anything on top. z changes shouldn’t change (x,y). In fact, this is why (x,y) coordinates are so useful — they avoid the distortion problem of the single wide angle lens in the middle. What GF has done in correcting that distortion based on focus height is extremely clever, but it does not (and cannot) give an accurate flat view, which makes hand positioning harder. @jaz: this information would be useful to add to your capture.

Finally, here’s what my “invisible” honeycomb looks like through the GF camera (I can see the honeycomb, though it was more obvious in the original than in this screen capture). I realize it would be a huge change to redesign the honeycomb to add a grid, so I doubt it will happen. If it did and was reasonably priced, I would be interested in a replacement.
Glowforge

Do you mean the pop-up progress window while you’re printing? You can reopen it by opening the project and clicking on PRINT again. It will pop right back up and take up where it left off.

Nor would any of us. But it’s nice to have the bulk of the work already done, with only the need for checking and tweaking the final settings.

Recent posts have indicated you can achieve very reliable positioning using a combination of printed rulers inside your GF and the new ones that have been added to the GFUI. I haven’t tried it, since I do my positioning in my design program or using jigs, and am content with those workflows.

My truck doesn’t float. It could, with a few modifications, but I doubt I could convince Toyota that it’s something they should spend development money on. They designed it to drive on roads, and no matter how much I think it should be a simple matter to add the capability of driving across the multiple rivers that bisect my routes without having to detour miles to find a bridge, it’s not what they intended with their product. GF is a camera-based system. Maybe they’ll add coordinate positioning some day, but frankly I’d rather have the camera-based functionality fully fleshed out first, since that’s the product I signed up for when I bought it.

The crumb tray doesn’t have a precise fixed position in the bed. Using it for positioning wouldn’t be any more reliable than the other methods available. The grid would also quickly get burned off / covered by residue, so it would be far from permanent. If it’s just for visibility, you could add your own with some laser-cut templates and spray paint, and then refresh it as needed as it gets demolished by the laser.

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As @geek2nurse said, and I believe was said previously, just open a project and click Print. It will open the dialog box showing the job timer. The JS progress preview probably won’t be accurate, but the timer is still accurate unless your machine pauses for cooling.

In a perfect world perhaps. I ask this though - how? If you leave your crumb tray in place, never remove it… sure. If you take it out and put it back in, it will be very close but that’s about it.

Seems like you are wishing for design changes, for a design that is already in place.

Lots of people, including myself, have repeatable results with no issues. Perhaps, it’s a workflow issue that needs to be addressed. But you don’t seem willing to make any changes in your approach.

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What?! It never occurred to me that the clearly labeled PRINT button wouldn’t try to print the thing that I just opened and instead would reopen the progress window. Weirdly, as I just discovered, you can open any project and click PRINT and it will reopen the status, ignoring the project you just opened (I wonder what happens when the print is done). Considering they label the PRINT button with Offline, Scanning, Select Material, Ready, Cooling Down, Calibrating, etc., why isn’t it labeled with “Click to Reopen Progress Window” or something like that? @jaz: another suggestion.

So I stand corrected that there’s no way to reopen that window, but I still think there is no obvious way to reopen that window. The fact that it took 25 replies for someone to point this out is an indicator of that :slight_smile: (but thanks for answering the question so I finally know how to do it).

In response to a few other things:

Wanting (x,y) positioning is about repeatability and consistency. I do this all the time in Illustrator, jotting down positions of something so I can restore it or do math with multiple positions in cases where the alignment tools won’t do what I want. Another example (something I personally don’t do, but is something I know GF users do). Suppose I bring in a standard design and then add artwork on top that I want to be centered? I have to eyeball it.

One of the key selling points of the GF system, and their explanation of why their software is a cloud service, is that they can update the software continuously and we’ll all get the updates instantly (I suspect they have some other reasons as well related to service bureaus and large company usage).

So, yeah, they said they’ll improve the software over time, so I’m asking for more.

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Not exactly. I initially thought about pointing that out but it seemed you were looking for different behavior or that you were experiencing a different problem rather than just needing, within a job, to redisplay the printing progress. This has been noted multiple times on the forum so it’s no big secret.

However, it is one of the not-well-documented features/methods of interaction/etc along the lines of increasing contrast on scans, speeding up cursor-driven repositioning, etc. They really need a comprehensive user manual (even if it’s just online).

I just saw I can move the bed image by clicking and dragging the rulers now vs just using the “hand” to move it as before.

Since you were pretty adamantly against opening a project window, it wasn’t an option I thought of suggesting, because without opening a project it’s impossible to get there. Also, you kept calling it the “app window,” and talking about losing settings, so it just didn’t occur to me that you might mean you wanted to get back to the progress window. There aren’t any settings there to lose.

For what it’s worth, a couple of us have spent a LOT of time typing replies and enduring some rather hostile responses for our effort. It’s not like we’re getting paid to do this or anything. We’re actually just nice people trying to help a fellow 'forger. So even though you qualified your first hint of thanks with a reminder of how sub-par you consider our extensive efforts at helping you, you’re still welcome.

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Yup!

Well, I just wanted to be able to get back to exactly where I was. Though I can get close, it is not actually possible. I can reopen the last project but it doesn’t remember my material settings. I have to re-enter that information. I can also show the progress window, but it seems that is disconnected from the current project (what actually happens after cutting is finished if I’m cutting project A, close the tab, then open project B, then click PRINT?). It is counterintuitive that the button to get back to the progress window is only accessible when you have a project open.

There’s a principle in UI design that you don’t name things unless you have to. Here, I think GF needed to name a few things that they didn’t, which doesn’t help discussion. Had there been clearer names, much of this discussion could have been short circuited.

I’ve been on your side too, many, many times. I do appreciate it. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t frustrated that I wasn’t learning what I actually wanted to know. I thought this must have a simple answer that I was just missing and I thought it was too small a question to create a ticket for. I’ll bet some of you have been on my side too in the past.

Many times. And I’ve generally been frustrated at the time. But I still do my best to be appreciative of complete strangers taking time out of their lives to try to help me even though there’s nothing in it for them.

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Also, in my own defense, I attempted to clear up any miscommunication by posting screenshots of what I thought you were talking about. Maybe if you had looked at them and pointed out that I had misunderstood (because it should have been perfectly obvious, when the photos I posted weren’t actually of the screen you were asking about) instead of just criticizing my choice of terminology, we might have made it to a solution more quickly.

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"The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place." - George Bernard Shaw

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Very apt in this case. Understanding that all he wanted to know how to do was to get back to the Progress screen would have saved a couple hours for several people. :smile:

No biggie.

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Thanks for following up, @roy. As @jbmanning5 and @geek2nurse pointed out, here’s how to get back to the print window if you close it:

  1. Sign in to app.glowforge.com
  2. Click on your design to open it
  3. Look in the upper right-hand corner. You should see the time remaining on your print next to your Glowforge unit’s name
  4. Click on the word “PRINT” and you’ll see the print window again

Additionally, I’ve let the team know about your report regarding saved settings and material height, and we’re looking into that now. I apologize for any inconvenience.

Again, I want to thank you for taking the time to share your feedback and suggestions regarding autosave, as well as x,y positioning. We’ve added this to the information we’re passing along to the team.