I purchased a vector file today from Etsy in order to put my unit through its paces while still under warranty. The vector file comes as one .SVG with three sets of plans. What steps should I take print one plan on my “Glowlocity?”
robert
Can’t really tell you without looking at the actual vector file. Depending on what was used to create it, it might need a little bit of work or a lot of work to make it readable in the Glowforge interface.
If you just want to print one plan out of the three though, I’d select that one plan, copy it, and paste it into a separate file so that the interface has less to deal with.
Then you need to check to see if the lines are joined, (If not, group them together and draw a contrasting color vector rectangle stroke around it.) Check the scale in your 2D vector program, and if you are engraving anything, make sure that the island areas are subtracted out and don’t have any white fills. That sort of thing. They might not be needed, but it saves time to check up front and fix as many things as you can find before you start. 
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Thank you ma’am. Here is the file. It appears that this “project” is going to be a great learning opportunity for me as well as much of what you shared is truly Greek to me. I am multi-tasking while still going through the tutorials that you recommended, so the learning curve is steep. I’m attempting to taper it off since I learn best by doing.
Hmmm…I don’t think that came out right.
Jules,
Tried copying and pasting but file will only copy entire file.
robert
Discourse does that black thing when certain style information is included in the file… probably going to need some work. (Zipping it is the best way to upload.)
Having said that, go ahead and edit that post to delete the Zipped file that you uploaded…since you purchased it, you don’t want to be letting it get away from you. (Copyright and all that…I’ll delete it once I’ve looked at it.)
Just click on the post with the file in it and click on the little pencil icon behind the three dots at the lower right.
I’ll take a look at the file, it looks pretty good actually.
Jules, you should try joining multiple segments instead of grouping them. In inkscape select all the segments that need joining, then switch to the node edit tool. All the nodes of all the segments should now show up. Use the node tool to select all the nodes, then hit shift+j to join all the overlapping nodes. This works great when I pull in .dxf files from CAD and then are just a mess of segments.
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Yeah, I use something similar in Illustrator - I have a really good little Concatenation plugin from RJGrafix. Does the same thing. 
You don’t actually have to join them, the GFUI can handle them separately, but it takes it a lot longer to figure out what’s going on and process it if you don’t have a closed shape drawn around them. (And they’re harder to move around.)
@rmelvin06, you deleted the text of your post but not the file. It’s the long string of numbers that looks like gobbledy-gook.
Just select everything and delete it, then type the words “Hi Glowforge team” or something like that. (They’ll get a kick out of it.) 
Okay, I’ve looked at the file and it’s rather well laid out… you’ll need to make a couple of decisions.
First decide what kind of material you want to use for it. Looks like you have a choice of 3mm material (the equivalent of the Medium plywoods and Draftboard that Glowforge uses, or 4 mm which is a slightly odd size, but might be in there just for slightly thicker stuff.)
(Probably want to just use the Medium plywood or draftboard.) 
Then you would need to decide which Frame style you want to use.
Once you’ve made those choices, copy the appropriate panels into another file.
He’s offered suggestions for what to do with certain areas based on the line color. He suggests engraving the green areas, and if you want to use a filled engrave on those areas, you are going to need to add a fill and remove the stroke color. (You can change it in the interface, but with a lot of options it’s harder to find.
He has a different color for what he calls Deep cuts and Shallow Cuts. A Shallow Cut is going to be a Score, and you will have to change that in the Interface.
I need to check a couple more things before further suggestions, but it won’t be hard to work with that one. I need to see if it loads.
I tried copying separate panels but I seem to get all three plans. Clearly, my ignorance is showing.
It might need to be ungrouped first, possibly several times…give me a minute to start working on it, it takes time to type responses here, I haven’t started tearing it apart yet.
Which one do you want?
Frame 1, 3mm, original.
Which vector program did you import it into?
I have Inkscape.
I work out of Illustrator. In Inkscape you have to first select everything and then I believe it’s Object> Break Group. Or maybe Path> Break Group. (Can’t remember which.)
Since I am just cutting my teeth, should I learn by using AI?
If you are more comfortable with AI, and you already own it, then that’s the one I’d use. (Just use the one you are most familiar with though.)
Okay, the only potential problem I see with the file is the engraving of the Wine label with the grapes. If you want to fill that in with a solid engrave, it’s going to take a lot of work, in order to correctly subtract the proper areas that are not to be engraved, and it’s…flexible. It could go a couple of ways depending on how you want it to display.
On the other hand, if you just want to Score the lines, it’s already set up the way it needs to be, so that’s another decision you’ll have to make about it. Scoring it will not color it in, you’ll just get the outlines as shown in the original file.
Let me know if you feel strongly about engraving the label, If you do want it filled, print it off and color in the parts that you want to engrave then shoot a picture and show me. It’s going to be beyond beginner level to convert.
Thank you. Will color it in. Closing down for the night. Gotta get ready to go earn the mortgage.