Improving Custom Material Handling

[chris.abbott]

I have found the custom material function to not be very suitable or usable:
a) No option for Saving a Custom Material
b) All custom settings are saved in a big list
c) Everything has to be manually repeated every time
d) Unable to share setting with other team members in the office
e) No way to change Name once Saved
f) No way to delete once Saved (?)
g) Currently in the one saved name you need to describe Material, Thickness, and Setting Usage. Not easy and sometimes not consistent (see ‘e’ above)

Here is my proposed solution
a) Allow users to create “Custom Materials”:

• Customer can give it a really useful name
• The thickness would be saved
  b) Saved Cut/Engrave/etc settings are stored either “as now” or “under material”
  c) Re-selecting the Custom Material from the list will automatically bring in all the custom Cut/Engrave/etc settings for that material

Additional Allow Custom Materials to have a barcode (set by Customer), then all the sheets of that same custom material I have just have to be placed into the machine.

While were on this, how about allowing a customer Custom Settings barcode that includes all the settings e.g. “T0.06Ep87s750l270Cpfs873”
Thickness 0.06", Engrave power 87% speed 750 lines 270, Cut power full speed 873
Just come up with a standard format for everyone to follow, and allow your users to realize the full potential of there machine.

And yes settings change between Basic,Plus,Pro, but most people only use one

[eflyguy]

This should be posted in Problems and Support if you want Glowforge staff to see it and add to the feature request list. They do not monitor the regular discussion forums.

Most of what you are asking works just fine with the current custom settings capability, however. You can save, save-as (as in under a new name), duplicate, delete, all settings including focus height are saved. All for custom materials. So I’m not sure what you’re missing.

[evansd2]

So these are good feedback, but if you want GF staff to see it you should email support@glowforge.com or open a ticket in problems and support.

This ticket didnt open a ticket, and moving it to P&S won’t either, it has to be created there.

I do have some feedback -

a: custom settings yes, but no, not a custom material.
b: so true. I don’t like that either, and I also don’t like that custom is last, it should be at the top of the list.
c: Not sure what you mean by “everything”, If you mean that you have to select the settings for each operation in a job then yes, that’s sort of irritating, I wish you could say “all steps are this setting”.
d: Not in the UI, no. Never considered that, good point.
e: You can resave it with a different name and delete the old version. It’s clunky but it works.
f: Untrue, click the little arrow to the right of the settings and you can edit/save as/save over and delete.
g: Like yours, see e above, but yeah naming is tricky. I actually don’t name them for the materials, I name them for the setting. For cuts I have 180/full, 190/full, 200/full, etc… for engraves I have 500/full/270/1x/vary power, etc. Naming it something like “cherry dark” is handy as well if you use a lot of cherry, but I find that I set those up as temporary spots. I also have a “…cut scratch” and “…engrave scratch” setting that I keep around so that I can setup temporary saved settings and reuse them if I’m doing a one off project and want to save between iterations of testing. The periods at the beginning force it to be first alphabetically so it’s always a the top of my list.

So, yeah you have fair points, some of which I think maybe there are good workarounds for, some of which are missing, and some that are clunky no matter what

[evansd2]

Oh you added a solution. Nice, some good ideas in there. Still needs to go in email or a new ticket, but it’s good.