Introducing Snapmark (September 2018)

I’ve conferred with the judges, and we’ll allow it.

3 Likes

I’ve had issues with PDFs being imported at the wrong size, too.

Well that’s unfortunate. Thanks for letting me know.

This seems like an excellent idea to me.

That ought not to happen. If you have a PDF that loads into the Glowforge UI with the wrong size then you should probably send it to support so they can investigate.

Not into GFUI; into vector software, like when you’re adding it to a jig template. If you know what dpi it was designed for, you can specify that on import and it will come in correctly, but if you don’t know, it comes in at whatever DPI your software uses, which may or may not be the one that works.

Actually, I just remembered which file it was that led to that discovery – this one: Upgrade to pro, cost, slot mod

PDFs don’t use pixel units the way SVGs do, so DPI should never be an issue. (The PDF spec is based entirely around the Postscript point, which is defined to be exactly 1/72 of an inch.)

I only see an SVG file there, not a PDF.

SVGs have DPI issues because they’re often laid out in pixel units (hence you need to know how many pixels there are per inch).

Oops, then that wasn’t the one. Darn.

Now I’m going to be trying to remember all day which file it was…

yeah, i’m a little confused by that as well. if design software is opening a PDF and misinterpreting size, then the design software is flawed.

2 Likes

I ran into a minor issue this morning with Snapmarks, and I thought I would share with the class.

I had a cut with two items, one stacked on top of the other, and I had the snapmarks centered on the page. It mostly worked fine, but when I got to my last one it didn’t cut the top piece! Turns out it was outside of the cut area. It seems like it wouldn’t be too hard to have the Snapmark return a warning or error if part of your cut will be outside of the area. I had thought that if you had cuts outside the area, that you literally couldn’t start the cut. I guess I was wrong.

Not a big deal, I shifted the paper, re-snapped and deleted the lower piece that had already been cut.

2 Likes

That one has bit me before too.

And I have no doubt I’ll forget and…

4 Likes

In related news, I just got junk mail on Trotec’s machine vision/alignment feature.

https://www.troteclaser.com/en-us/laser-machines/laser-software/jobcontrol-vision/

3 Likes

that’s pretty cool. i wonder if they have other things in the hopper for that mounted camera.

I feel like I shouldn’t tell glowforge this… but the camera feature is about $6K for the trotec; not sure for epilog.

2 Likes

:heart::heart: SNAPMAAAAAAAAAAAARKS!!! :heart::heart:

IMG_2643

25 Likes

Thats what I call Accuracy! :stuck_out_tongue:

2 Likes

I take it you’re pleased.

2 Likes

Oh, YES! My granddaughter is, too. I made her a handful of pencils with her name on them for school. Open template file, throw in some text, convert to curves and merge it, duplicate and align across the 8 pencil slots (hmmm, gotta try cloned text in Inkscape and see if that could go even faster!), save and send to GF. Grab the cardboard template from where I hung it on the pegboard, toss it in the GF with a couple of magnets, insert pencils. Open file in GFUI, set material height, “ignore” template and snapmarks, select custom “Pencil” setting for engraving, click the magnet, wait for snap, click print.

Snapmarks plus custom material settings make for a really smooth flow!

I have an SVG I made pre-snapmarks, but in anticipation of getting them, I added them to it. It contains the pattern for my Floral Vase , which requires two-sided engraving, but also during one of my “too tired to do anything but too bored to just lie there” periods I designed a whole bunch of wooden flower parts and filled the sheet with them, like this:

I cut the full sheet yesterday before my granddaughter came over for her usual Friday night sleepover, in case she wanted to paint some of the flowers. (She wanted to paint ONE, and then she wanted me to play Minecraft with her. ;P) So just as an experiment, before we headed back upstairs I put the remaining cutout board back in the GF, and when I got my laptop fired up for Minecraft I took a second to pop into the GFUI and tell it to snap. I really didn’t think it would work, because of all the small shapes cut out of the board that are similar in size to the snapmarks – BUT IT DID!!!

I am so excited.

14 Likes

I’m amazed it found the Snapmarks in all of that. Wow.

(I couldn’t find them at first)

4 Likes

I’m excited to try the Snapmark feature on my GF, so I tried a simple test:

Two “bracket” score lines whose end points should line up, positioned between two Snapmarks.

  1. Printed the Snapmark scores and the top bracket.
  2. Moved the work piece.
  3. Hit the Snapmark button, got the “Scanning for Snapmarks…” message, aaaaand…
  4. Nothing happened.

Any idea what’s going on?

Best,
Rod