I’ve had this issue with my X-carve before and I’m wondering if anything can be done.
The cut pattern chosen by the Glowforge is very inefficient.
Video unlisted on youtube so you can see it - HERE
Can anything be done design-wise or in settings or layout that can help the Glowforge choose a better layout a run? I had 50 items lined up and for some reason, it was cutting part on the left and right and passing by the ones in the middle. Seem like this added at least 25% longer run time?
There is just no explaining some of the cut patterns the algorithms pick but you can take control by color coding your work and manually setting the order.
Also, if it’s doing a lot of engraving, you can lay out all the pieces and combine the rasters into one large one that covers all of them. That would prevent a lot of skipping around. Also, make sure you orient the bulk of the raster engraving in the horizontal direction as that is more efficient from a head movement standpoint.
It does seem like this but @dan has said that they tested it a bunch of ways and that it never made a huge difference.
Previously (lots of previously):
https://community.glowforge.com/search?context=topic&context_id=36945&q=Optimized%20path&skip_context=true
To keep the pixel size good you need to make a huge raster. However, if you make just one and copy paste that one while in the GFUI they will cut in the order that you create them so by pasting them in a row they will be printed one at a time in that row, but if scattered they will still follow order of creation. If you import many copies of a raster each one will be a layer and they will still cut one at a time
As for the so called “Travelling Salesman” problem I don’t know that huge computers can reliably accomplish that, and Glowforge reports that the time benefits do not justify the time spent by our computers trying to improve on what they already do.
It really doesnt make that much of a difference on time.
Plastics don’t like having too much heat concentrated in one spot and woods can tend to warp when you cut out large areas and releasing tension in the grain.
Like others have said, I use color coding to give a little more control over ordering.
Pretty much the only time I do this is to ensure that it cuts inside to out when doing complicated nested cuts. Other than that I just let the GF do its thing.
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