Introducing Snapmark (September 2018)

Mine was doing that too, The team looked at my logs and determined that my machine calibration wasn’t right. They need to work on the calibration algorithm before I’ll be able to use it. :frowning:
You might be in the same boat as me.

Hummm… did you get it fixed ?
Thanks

Still waiting, no eta on the fix.

they also said snapmark was on the path to getting passthrough working, which was promised and not delivered, so not as much a side project as you suggest.

“The beta release will also help us perfect our Pro Passthrough software for Glowforge Pro customers.”

“Snapmark is a new, experimental feature. Unlike everything else we’ve released, this was not a part of our core feature set - it’s wasn’t part of our original software commitment to deliver to you.”

2 Likes

Yeah, no. Just because the company says it’s not part of the original commitment does not mean commitments have been met. Until such time as core promised features are delivered such as passthru alignment for the Pro, and accurate placement for the Basic, the best available solution should me provided to everyone. Snapmarks are the best available solution at this time. If the company wants to consider that temporary OK, but everyone should have a solution if it is available. Not one to complain, but the forum regulars have slowly moved toward accepting a “less than” approach to features. Sure, a couple of the original promised features were in my opinion technically unrealistic and I’m just fine with giving the company a pass on those, but a feature that gets me “close” to how the machine was advertised should be available to everyone until the final S/W is delivered. I have Snapmarks and they work just fine for me. I’m arguing for everyone else. Can not fathom why a solution to past failures should be considered something extra.

3 Likes

I agree. I don’t expect the machine to do anything more than it does today which is less than what was sold. I also don’t expect to see the designs from the original video as promised. It all may come but realistically it’s likely years away.

It’s disappointing but I think it’s more realistic than waiting for Godot.

The pace of software change feels glacial when I would have expected it to speed up. Recent upticks in announcements haven’t been anything that seemed they were that large from an effort standpoint (yeah I know I’m falling into the “I’m a software developer and my experience says…” assumption trap, but it’s been 4 years for criminy’s sake).

I’m okay with what it is now though - still beats my other options. So I still recommend it to others for hobby use but I only talk about the features that are there now.

4 Likes

It’s irrational to assume they would purposely withhold the feature from anyone if it were possible to give it to everyone right now. They said it was beta, and that they were rolling it out first to machines that it could most easily be implemented on. It isn’t guaranteed that all machines will be able to accommodate the feature, and my take-away from that is that until they can make sure it can work for all machines, it will be a beta feature and not guaranteed to stick around. Obviously, since it’s still in beta, that question hasn’t yet been answered.

It doesn’t help for people to keep asking for it repeatedly. They’re still adding it to machines, which is hopeful, but with more than 10,000 Glowforges out there, and it having to be implemented one machine at a time, I think that insisting they focus all their energy on Snapmarks would completely derail any ability to move forward on any of the features that WERE part of the original commitment.

3 Likes

Snapmark’s reliance on the quality of the data they collected per machine is … unfortunate. Some lucky folks have it now. Some less lucky folks will get it later. And, presumably, some unlucky folks will be unable to get it at any time.

I assume that this applies to Basic and Pros equally since the machines are identical in terms of the cameras.

I am worried that the sloooooow progress on Snapmarks means that the Unreleased Magical Passthrough software, which we know is related to Snapmarks, will suffer the same problems. If official passthrough support rolls out the same way as the unexpected Snapmarks are, there’s gonna be a laser riot!

2 Likes

Is anyone having issue with snap marks not recognizing the document? I was making two passes and didn’t move the document or the parts inside the glowforge and for some reason it says that the snap marks don’t alight? I had this issue a few days ago so I recut the remplate again and it worked for a day, now its not working again?

It says "Snapmarks do match

"

I take the opposite view – the slow progress on Snapmarks means they’re working hard on the core feature set. They’ve SAID that Snapmarks development would take a back seat to developing the things that were initially promised. So I just don’t get everyone clamoring for them to drop everything else and focus on Snapmarks, while simultaneously complaining that the core feature set isn’t yet complete.

I can’t help thinking there are a whole bunch of people here who have never dealt with the challenges of actually running a business consisting of more than one person, and/or are really bad at math. Somehow GF is supposed to churn out software updates while reporting to us constantly on every detail of what they’re doing, what they’re not doing, and exactly why, ship everything immediately, maintain full production capacity, provide instant tech support (preferably by phone, 24/7), finish negotiating import/export details with every country in existence, email every one of us every time there’s a change in the availability of any type of PG material, AND roll out a beta feature to 10K individual machines RIGHT NOW.

Bottom line is, no matter what they do, there will be complaining about how they’re doing it and what they’re not doing in order to do it. As a crowdfunder, I put my money down based on my belief that they’re going to keep doing what they judge is most important in order to keep moving forward, and that they’re in the best position to know what’s most important for them to be focusing their attention on at any given point in time.

6 Likes

Yes, as a matter of fact - I saw that yesterday when I was helping someone else out with an issue in her file. I thought at the time that it was related to the size of the design…which was pushing a full 19 inches wide, but it might be something else if more people are seeing it.

What you might want to try if you can is to shift the material to the left by about 3/4" and try to let it snap again. Please let me know if that works, because if it does, it will be something that @bonny and the team might need to take a look at.

2 Likes

I just used the snapmarks for the first time the other night, on a long cut for the Nerdy Gurdy I’m building. Thank you to ALL who’ve posted about doing this, I couldn’t have done it without you.

Lots of prep time in the AutoCAD file = perfect outcome. They worked AWESOME.

Well, almost awesome - I used 1/4 material when I was supposed to use 1/8 material, so now I have to cut again, but hey at least I KNOW it works!

4 Likes

Also a valid interpretation. Apparently I’m more of a cynic! I am also making some different assumptions about how closely Snapmarks are related to Passthrough, and how Snapmark’s slow progress may relate to Passthrough progress.

All we can do is wait.

5 Likes

…and just down the page from where they wrote that, they wrote what I posted.

“The beta release will also help us perfect our Pro Passthrough software for Glowforge Pro customers.”

They added

“With a little effort, it lets you use the Pro Passthrough even better than before.”

and

“Testing Snapmark will speed development of Pro Passthrough and other forthcoming vision features by providing real-world calibration data.”

If it is helping them “perfect” and “speed development of” Passthrough, then it is not a side project.

2 Likes

Actually yes, and I speak with some authority on the topic. Because you know what we do on a much more massive scale are those very things. Because the person doing the communication is not the guy writing the code, nor answering our support questions. Any firm like this will have a devops team who tracks progress, and product management is updating upper management about sprint status (I am assuming Glowforge uses Agile - because 2019) and management formulates a communication plan to the user base. Support is mostly independent but obviously support can affect the dev cycle by requesting Fixes get injected into an existing sprint. As far as rolling out snap marks, assuming the characteristics of a compatible machine are know, this can be automated. One by one implies that humans are being used, rather than a script.

2 Likes

[quote=“geek2nurse, post:1182, topic:28915”] l
take the opposite view – the slow progress on Snapmarks means they’re working hard on the core feature set.
[/quote]

The slow progress actually means that the investors or management weren’t willing to fund an appropriate level of S/W development. Whether that be through an on-site S/W team or a 3rd party contracted team.

Maybe you should give us a time frame for how long is reasonable for alignment and pass thru. Is it weeks, months or years? I would pretty well guarantee that the answer would have been no more than months from even the most easy going owner when the production units first rolled out. It’s likely some will still be here in another year parroting that the company is doing the best it can. I don’t know whether they are or not, but honestly there is zero evidence to base such a feeling. My trust is not based on whether the CEO seems to be a nice guy.

None of this would be a major issue for me if Dan had not suggested Snapmarks was somehow an unpromissed bonus feature. Even to suggest it might be a paid for service in the future. To me it is only a work around for the core promised features. I have little faith that those core features will be available before the early units are out of warranty and fail. A lot of good that will do anyone. But go ahead and be OK with a partial Glowforge.

4 Likes

That’s guaranteed. Many are closing in on warranty expiration - even Pros with the extended warranty. And we are seeing machines die with some regularity across the age span of the boxes. It’s inevitable that we’re going to start to see out of warranty fails in the next few months.

1 Like

I doubt glowforge would agree with me but I think warranty leniency until the original promised feature set was complete would be reasonable.

3 Likes

actually, a lot of basics are already out of warranty. we’re at least 8 months past the end of the first year for the earlier shipments. by this time a year ago they seemed to have shipped the majority of the original orders to US customers.

1 Like