Is there a way to prep my SVG to cut the inside shapes before the outside shapes? e.g. if I cut the letter O, it’ll cut the outer path first and the material will drop down a little bit to the crumbtray (my plastic doesn’t lay perfectly flat). Then it’ll cut the inner path which will be slightly misaligned. If I could get the inner cut first, it would reduce this problem.
Not a problem, just color code the parts you want to cut first while in your art program and then drag that set higher in the GFUI , The GFUI cuts/ engrave/ scores from top to bottom. So I often have several cut operations in the order I want, all after the engraves and scores.
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Man, I need a preflight checklist. When I forget, it’s either I forgot to measure the thickness before I have the material squared to the bed, or I forget to order the ops.
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If you want to control the cut order of text, you’ll need to converted it to objects and separate all the interior shapes. In inkscape you use the break apart command (Ctrl + Shift + K)
Here is a sample:
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Thanks for the answers, @mike10 and @markevans36301, that’s right! If you’re not familiar with vector design, it starts with two simple ideas: a stroke (which is an outline) and a fill (which is a filled-in shape). When you upload your file, strokes become cuts and fills become engraves.
If you give the strokes on different parts of your design different colors, you can control the order in which the Glowforge cuts. Each color is a different step in the printing process. You can assign different settings to each color. These steps show up on the left hand side of the workspace when you upload a design to the Glowforge app, and you can drag the steps into the order you prefer.
I’m going to close this thread - if you run into any trouble, go ahead and post a new topic. Happy printing!