I downloaded AD with the trial version that’s good for 10 days. Currently it’s 30% off so it’s only $35. I’m not sure how long the promo is going on so to be safe I might just play around with the trial version tonight and maybe order it tonight or tomorrow. I’ve looked around in the UI a little bit this afternoon and it has a similar feel to Photoshop and Illustrator. It definitely has a UI that seems better IMO then Inkscape.
Could anyone else chime in for the pros or cons of AD vs Inkscape?
I never saw Inkscape till a month after I ordered the Glowforge, and now it is my go-to software, but then I have a PC. There are a lot of things I would like to see but not sure AD or AI has a better answer for a PC but if on a mac I guess 'built for it" is better than “adjusted to make it work”
Affinity Designer is still missing a few features whereas Inkscape has pretty much anything you could think of. But AD runs much better on macOS and most people (including me) seem to find its user interface much easier to figure out.
One thing to watch for in Affinity Designer is that certain path operations (most notably Subtract) generate paths that require the shape’s fill mode to be set to even-odd in order to display as expected but the Glowforge web interface has a bug where it doesn’t support the even-odd fill rule in SVG files. (It does support it in PDF files, though, which is one of several reasons why I generally save files as PDF for use with the Glowforge.)
You can also do a lot with Gimp
Well this has been a wealth of information but I still have the same unanswered issues and concerns I had initially when I posted this thread. Which is, is there a workaround or a fix for Inkscape to operate on newer macOS without lagging or bugs issues?
I really like the idea of a free open source app like Inkscape, but at the same time it’s useless for me to use on my current set up since it’s a new Mac and Inkscape runs painfully slow to the point where I can’t even move an object without waiting a few seconds for it to catch up to the cursor movements. My computer acts as if it’s a 10 year old boat anchor. I have more robust programs that work perfectly fine e.g., Photoshop Elements.
Just curious, what features is AD missing that you’re referring to?
And can you elaborate more on the odd-even or even-odd feature or give an example if you don’t mind since I’m a newbie.
AD doesn’t yet have a Knife tool like the one in Illustrator to quickly cut shapes into pieces. (Instead you need to draw a new shape and use the Divide command to cut it out of the original.) Nor does it have a Scissors tool for quickly splitting paths. (Instead you have to use the Node tool, click to add a node, then click Break Curve. It does the same thing, but it’s more cumbersome.)
There are lot of little things like that. And a few bigger things are also missing, although those are mostly advanced features like mesh distortion that most people don’t use.
On the other hand AD has a lot of other cool and useful stuff. (But a lot of it is geared more towards illustration and is less applicable to generating files for the Glowforge.)
They’re constantly adding new features, and eventually they may catch up, but for now it’s a bit behind. But the price is a heck of a lot better than Illustrator (which is subscription-only now) and more user-friendly than Inkscape.
Fill rules define what is “inside” and what is “outside” of a shape. There are two common rules, even-odd and non-zero. With the non-zero rule it matters which direction each path goes:
With the even-odd rule the direction doesn’t matter:
The Glowforge software supports both rules when you’re using PDF (although I think I’ve run into a few quirks in the past) but with SVG it always uses the even-odd rule. So some shapes get filled in when they shouldn’t be.
In this next example you can see how the shape in the top row looks different depending on which fill rule is used. In the top row the inner and outer paths go in the same direction, whereas in the bottom row they go in opposite directions. With the even-odd rule the direction the paths are drawn doesn’t matter. But with the non-zero rule it does, so you get different results.
When importing SVG the Glowforge forces the fill rule to be non-zero, so anything drawn like the shape in the upper-right ends up looking like the shape in the upper-left. People who use Illustrator tend not to run into this because Illustrator defaults to using the non-zero rule and it will reverse the direction of paths as needed to make things look right. (Although it doesn’t always work. When a path crosses itself it’s easy to get a situation where you can’t fix it by reversing the direction of a path. In that case the even-odd fill rule sometimes really is needed.)
The Glowforge gets it right (at least mostly) when using PDF, so that’s one reason I mostly use PDF with the Glowforge. (It also handles text in PDFs, which has to be converted to paths when saving as SVG, and with PDF you shouldn’t need to worry about designs importing at the wrong size, which can be a problem in SVG.)
You’ll have to wait for the Inkscape people to fix it. Or you can use the old 0.9x versions of Inkscape which are faster, but those are a pain because you have to install XQuartz which is finicky and acts a bit weird at times. The newer versions of Inkscape are much nicer when they aren’t being super slow.
I started using AD early on, after trying Inkscape, with which I could never quite get comfortable. I love it now after taking the past 2+ years learning to use it. I know there are features that I don’t even know about, yet…but, that’s part of the fun to me, discovering a new technique or new ability that I didn’t have before.
Actually, It appears that the new Inkscape will do either. I was having to toss out designs after combines as areas got filled in, but the last two new icons were to choose which way to go and much work would have saved had I known that.
Ahh, that would explain why I don’t have that issue anymore. I use PDF instead of SVG now, pretty much exclusively.
Also, +1 for Affinity Designer!
tim1724
Does XQuartz allow the 32 bit older version of Inkscape to run a newer macOS 64 bit?
Oh, were the pre-1.0 versions 32-bit only? In that case nothing will let you run them on Catalina or Big Sur. (Aside from running another OS inside VMware or Parallels.)
OK since I’m a newbie I can ask this question. Why would you need to have the path going clockwise or counterclockwise and why would that matter for the GFUI?
Well I bit the bullet and dropped down the 35 bucks for AD. Since it was 30% off I took it advantage of it. I ended up printing out or cutting out (it should be really called?) an iPhone stand. Below is a pic of the front and back.
I ended up having to scale a second cutting since the first cut was for thinner material. The material I cut was 0.13”. So in AD I had to do a little math and scale up the second cut. I measured with calipers the gap where the two pieces slide together in the original first cut and it was 0.079”. To make the stand work with my 0.13” material I had to scale by a factor of 1.392. The math goes like this:
0.079/0.13 = 0.608 (ratio of thin to thick material)
1 - 0.608 = 0.392, then to scale up from original size to my material thickness it would be 1 + 0.392
= 1.392.
The 1.392 value was then entered into the transform dialogue box in AD to scale up by a factor of 1.392 and voila the correct fit on the second cutting. In AD you enter the equation:
Well kind of a correct fit. It was a tight fit, and I had to force the two pieces together. I have to admit I did not consider the kerf of 0.008 (newbie mistake). And I’m not sure but if someone could chime in. Do you have to multiply that kerf by two since there is two edges of the two pieces coming together?
Here is a pic of the two different sizes with the assembled piece being the larger of course:
Anyway great thread info so far…
The direction of paths only affects which parts of a shape are filled when using the non-zero fill rule (which Glowforge always uses when importing SVGs). It’s part of the definition of the non-zero fill rule. (And of course fills only affect engraving; scores and cuts only look at where the path is, not what’s filled.)
Affinity Designer usually uses the even-odd rule, where direction doesn’t matter. And if you export from AD to PDF format, even-odd works fine and you don’t have to worry about it. The only time it’s a problem is if you use SVG and the Glowforge converts all all your shapes using the even-odd fill rule to use the non-zero rule, at which point the wrong parts of the shape may be filled.
Inkscape/Illustrator users don’t run into this as often because those programs default to non-zero fill so you don’t get any surprises when loading those designs into the Glowforge.
AD users do tend to run into this because AD defaults to using the even-odd fill rule. It’s not a big deal, you just need to do one of three things to fix your files when you run across it:
AD isn’t the only program to make heavy use of the even-odd fill rule. Corel Draw is the same way. But because the people at Glowforge seem to only bother testing their product using files from Illustrator and Inkscape they haven’t shown any interest in fixing the problem with the even-odd fill rule in SVG files.
Thanks for the input tim1724. A lot of great info there.
Since you seem to know quite a bit about GF and vector graphics I’ll ask an unrelated question. On this forum do you happen to know how people reply to to others in this forum with a gray box quoting the other persons reply to reference your own reply. For example your reply to mine:
Thx
Highlight the text you want to quote then click the “Quote” button that appears next to the selected text. Like this:
Maybe a fix;
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