Trying to work on some maps and have clipped out what I don’t want. Every time I export the SVG it includes everything, including what I have hidden. What’s the work around? I’ve googled this and tried everything they have suggested. Even trying to export as Artboard includes stuff that is way off my artboard. Any ideas? Thanks.
Unfortunately, AI clipping masks don’t work with the Glowforge.
If you’re trying to crop rasters, you’ll need to use a raster program like Photoshop or GIMP. If it’s vectors, Illustrator’s pathfinder tools may be what you need.
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I had the same issue. I ultimately cropped in photoshop, and copy/pasted into illustrator. Then there was nothing masked.
Problem with that is I can’t preserve cut lines vs the engrave lines. Thanks though.
First my disclaimer - I don’t know what your image looks like, and I’m only just bumbling along with my limited Illustrator skills. But, the one instance that I had when this was an issue, I did the engrave first, then added artwork that included the original engrave and cuts, and ignored the engrave. Are you using different colors so that the GF will treat them as separate operations?
I’ve set different colors but when I either save as png or even pdf, GF shows everything as a single raster and doesn’t differentiate. That is in Photoshop. I then tried to copy and paste to Inventor and save as svg, but it still didn’t pick out the difference.
It would be helpful if we knew a bit more about the artwork your working with. Is it all vectors, or a mix of vector and raster?
From your other responses, I am guessing you have a map you want to engrave a portion of, and then cut out.
If you create a clipping path to isolate the part of the map you want to keep, you can rasterize the clip group with a transparent background.
Setting different colors in Photoshop to show cuts and engraves doesn’t work because everything PS does is raster and GFUI is looking for vectors to indicate cut lines.
One workflow is to set up your raster image the way that you want in PS, save, then open in Illustrator in order to add your cut lines. Depending on the shape of your cut, you might do this by using one of the shape tools, or by drawing an outline of your image with the pen tool. If your shape is more complicated, check out this tutorial:
Then once you’ve added your cut line, you can save out the image as an SVG and GFUI will interpret your vectors and rasters as different operations.
If your original image is fairly straightforward, another option would be to open your raster file in Illustrator and use Live Trace on it, then use the Pathfinder palette to crop (I’d draw my crop shape over the top and then use Minus Back). However, if you’re planning on doing any 3D engraving, you are better off leaving your image as a raster and just adding a cutline to it.
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Working on a map of a lake, trying to replicate the ones I’ve seen with street maps around, and cut out the water portion and put a layer of blue behind it. I’ve gone through the examples of using OpenStreetMap and Maperative and go things like I wanted it, but the SVG still had full lines. Everything I was doing, would leave me with the engrave portion, but not the cut lines for the lake.
I’m currently cutting a test version that I traced a layer of just the lake and placed it as closely as I could, will see what happens when it finishes, but I like the idea of rasterizing that layer. Will try it.
Can you expand before export? Or use the shape tool to divide?