Hey everyone! I’ve spent the last 12 hours pulling my hair out so that you don’t have to! (Side note: This definitely feels like it should go in “Tips & Tricks”, but I can’t create a new topic there?)
I’ll make it short and sweet—your STROKE SETTINGS for a single path, DO affect the final placement of your SVG elements, by some amount. For me, it was about 0.3mm, which—sure isn’t very significant. However, I had a jig I was using and it was really bothering me that suddenly something had changed and it was off and there was seemingly nothing I could do to get it running again!
So, now that I’ve figured all of this out, I’ve codified it into a script which can be run anytime I need to spin up a new document for creating jigs!
EDIT: I don’t actually recommend using this script due to some gotchas. Watch the video below!
Script: Create new Glowforge Jig Template · GitHub
Template: GF Template.ai (340.4 KB) Important Note: I uploaded this template with a .ai ending, because .ait is not allowed. But illustrator wants a template in .ait file format. Just change the file ending when you download it, and you’ll be good to go.
i don’t understand the issue you’[re having that you are using this script to fix. i’ve been using AI on my GF for six years without any positioning issues. and stroke thickness means nothing to the GF. it’s just essentially a path that the laser is following. it follows the center of the stroke. the only issue i’ve seen with strokes is if you set it to anything other than center (i.e., if you set it to align to inside or outside) that can cause problems.
can you share some images of the issue you’re having? there may be a simpler solution.
You are correct that the actual scoring will just be the center of the stroke. However, if you’re using a path to mark the boundaries of your Glowforge bed, which is what I’m doing here, then changing the stroke of the path does actually affect the starting position.
Now I’m emphasizing “starting” position because IMO that’s the most important part of the process—I want to upload the SVG template and have it start in the exact same position every time, regardless of the actual jig templates used within the boundary rectangle. Does that make sense?
I think our intent behind the jigs is just slightly different, although I like your template!
I want to be able to take this jig out, and a week later load it back up and get pixel-perfect positioning for the 4-inch slate coasters I’m making. The way I do this is by ensuring my jig is always absolutely positioned in the exact same spot. Then the only other variable is ensuring that the GFUI loads my jig template into the exact same spot.
I included a video in my response to @shop which probably more clearly describes my intent here.
that’s interesting. i hadn’t seen that behavior. and it’s a really weird behavior, since the stroke width itself means absolutely nothing to the laser cutter. it really shouldn’t affect positioning, but it obviously does.
My guess is that it’s not actually a GFUI bug. I think it’s due to the way Illustrator exports SVGs, and actually, it’s not technically wrong because if you were to use that SVG on the web, you would want the stroke of the line to be taken into account for the overall SVG width.
But for our purposes (which admittedly is bastardizing SVG to cut things ) we actually want the stroke to be a very specific width to keep our entire SVG the same size.
It’s weird. It’s not intuitive at all. But… Now that I type this out, I’m not sure it’s wrong.
) we actually want the stroke to be a very specific width to keep our entire SVG the same size.