I’m usually a patient guy. although I love my 
the rendering time is killing me. Errors most of the time (after the usual 5 min or longer wait) unless it’s a tiny file in file size and dimension. Mix raster engraves and vector engraves and vector cut lines in one file, forgettabout it.
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Yeah I can’t do anything over 8 inches raster. What a bummer. Really wish they’d increase the onboard memory on these things.
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Maybe I am setting the files up wrong?! It is pretty much useless when you have a raster engrave, vector engrave and a vector cutline in the same file. Also even if the file is multiple images in one (like I do with the coins) it does each one individually, which slows down the complete time I am guessing. There should be a feature in the UI that allows you to group engraves so they engrave at the same time (like in a line up). I’m even rasterizing my complex vectors so it will not freak out on me which sometimes takes away crisp details. Ughhh, so over this right now…lol.
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If you have a lot of vector engraves it definitely helps to combine them all into one path. Otherwise you’ll get engrave overlap and double depth where it does cross. It will make the engrave faster too. If you have a lot of lines converging on one area though, I’d recommend raster instead. I’ve caught things on fire by having a starburst of lines running in vector. It just turned to a charred mess where they met in the center.
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In Inkscape I believe you do ‘Edit - select same - color’ and then ‘path - combine’ to group them into a single operation.
(Thanks to @marmak3261)
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Thanks, I’ll try those suggestions.
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I have been working on a sign for my show booth. If I try to print the whole thing (a bitmap and two blocks of text) it “scans” for several minutes and then “processes” for about 20 minutes and then the processing screen goes away without ever giving an error or lighting the print button. If I shrink the design, it will eventually work. Likewise if I choose any one of the three primary elements of the sign it will work.
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I can’t imagine limited onboard memory is the real reason these fail. If anything it’s a bug in the cloud software that chokes when it has to deal with too many instructions, at least thats what my money would be on. By the time it gets to your forge the data should be really trivial in size.
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I think the problem is the onboard memory is not big enough for these jobs to fit on one go. The GF is supposed to be able to break them up but last time Dan mentioned it that wasn’t implemented. So at the moment it is limited to jobs that fit in the buffer.
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Yeah, what Palmer said. I think currently everything has to fit into onboard memory in one go or it’ll just error out.
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How big is the onboard memory? Even REALLY complex jobs should not be more than in the area of 100 megs or so. That is assuming it is something like g-code or machine at least. It would seem really strange if the glowforge had less than like a gig or so. Memory is so cheap.
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No idea but remember this was designed more than two years ago so 1GB wasn’t as cheap then. Also the concept was to use a cheap controller and do the work in the cloud so it could be quite a small micro.
It really shouldn’t be hard to send a buffer, run it and then pause while downloading the next next one. But it wasn’t long ago that the machine couldn’t pause for cooling and pausing when you press the button is in the hopper.
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Just curious if anyone would post an image of what you guys are trying to do that takes so long?
Not your actual file, just wanna see what wild things are taking so long.
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Thank you for the feedback. I’ve passed on the request for grouping engraves.
Would you mind sharing one of the relatively simple files that you’re having trouble with, either here or at support@glowforge.com so that we can have a look? Also, it sounds like the error primarily occurs after you hit print, not while uploading. Is that correct?
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Is it normal to wait so long for a design to be processed? I’m really surprised to hear people talking about 20 minute waits. Even 5 minutes is hard to imagine.
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I don’t know about lasers, but in 3D printing, some models can take that length of time to be processed and sliced.
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There are a few cloud-side bugs we’re working on that collectively account for this. The onboard memory can hold about 3 hours worth of printing so that’s unlikely to be your problem.
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Thanks for confirming Dan, the conspiracy theories run wild around these parts. 
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Proper error messages would avoid the need for theories as to why a particular design won’t render.
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Pshh do you know how mature a bit of software has to be before anyone concerns themselves with verbose errors? 
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