How to cut a large Design into pieces

[bobby145]

Hello !

I got my Glowforge a few months ago (also a year) and now I’m looking into making larger project. Still pretty new to using the Glowforge and Inkscape. I’m trying to figure out the best way to take a large design (bigger than the Glowforge can cut in one piece ) and separate it into multiple pieces so that I can cut them and assemble them. Is there a website/program that can help me with that or a way with Inkscape ?

Thank you

[beerfaced]

It certainly is possible in inkscape. I have done this by creating rectangles that will fit inside the GF and overlaying them on the artwork. My graphic was converted to svg. I then cut them away (mine had 4 pieces) to leave only one which I saved to a file then did the same for each additional piece until I had them all saved. Then it’s a simple matter of cutting each piece out one at a time.

[kittski]

I’m not sure if you need the actual instructions/steps on how to break a file up in inkscape, or more of an idea how to design an oversized project, but in case it’s the later, here’s a great project for a look at how it can be done.

Calavera wall art (testing sizes)

this was a project i made to test a few things - cuts, scores and how to create a piece larger than my glowforge. i started by tracing a design from the internet and then i spent a long time trying to figure out where to break up the design into pieces that would fit in the gf bed. once i got it cut out i weeded parts and then spray painted the whole thing (i really loved how it looked before the second weeding - shiny vs matte black), weeded it again, and colored in some parts with a gold paint…

[jaugstman]

how do you cut them away in Inkscape? I’ve had issues with using the masking function when putting it back into the GFUI

[beerfaced]

Well if everything is an svg I simply overlay the rectangles and then choose all except one and hit cut. I then save the remaining one before pasting the others back in and repeating the process until I have saved one of each of the pieces. I should mention the rectangles must be solid fill.

[jaugstman]

so you have done your designing in the rectangles to begin with?
not just adding them after to break down an existing design?

[jaugstman]

just figured it out! thanks for sparking the brainwave!

[beerfaced]

No I bring the entire design in adjusted to the size you need. Then overlay rectangles that you know you will be able to cut out in the GF. I choose a different colour for each rectangle so I can keep track of them and snip away.

Excellent, I see you got it.

[o-o]

I posted a tutorial on how to do this over in Tips and Tricks a couple of years ago. It’s not the only one. Before we had the “official” passthru function, this was how we had to break up designs to print on larger materials, but it works fine whether or not you have a Pro…

Breaking up a large design (Inkscape)

If you want to cut a design larger than the bed of your machine, you need to break it into smaller pieces. This is one way to approach that problem: Here’s a basic design - text in raster/bitmap, converted to path. [22%201] Draw a box/rectangle that approximates the bed or material size. Convert this to a path. [40] Copy this and drag over each segment of your design, the software will “snap” the copies to line up with previous objects. If it doesn’t, it’s because you turned that off, and i…

[bobby145]

I followed your guide and was finally able to figure it out ! Thank you very much. Cut my design in 4 pieces and should be good to go !

Thanks to everyone who replied !