Thank you for all of the suggestions. I may go ahead and sign up at the reduced price now so I can see what I’m living without right now and then I can switch over gradually to some of the other suggestions (Noun Project).
I was unaware that you could drag files onto the interface, so I’ll have to test that out. Thank you for that tip.
One question I do have about the Shapes. I think I tried to use the shapes to create a rectangle in GlowForge interface and it would only create a square. I found that rather useless. Did I miss something? Are you able to create rectangles of different proportions in the Premium?
The only time difference on Premium is the processing time from when you click “print” in the web app until the light on the machine starts flashing white.
In my experience I save 5–30 seconds. (With most of my files being closer to 10 seconds saved.) If you do a lot of huge engrave operations though you may save a lot more time, perhaps a few minutes per job. But I think for most people the time savings are negligible and not a good reason to pay for Premium. The free designs and the design tools are better reasons to go Premium.
There has been a lot of discussion on this, and to be honest it usually devolves into something of a headache. So I’ll give you my honest opinion and hope that it gives you some of my perspective. Whether it is worth it or not is entirely a personal thing.
If you are asking should you pay 50 for features you may or may not use, then the answer is no. If you can create your own files, then there really isn’t anything more than convenience tools for you.
I create my own files. But I also bought the premium. I bought it because I was able to get it at the intro rate rather than the 50 dollars. I make a lot of random things, but to me, the commercial rights on some of the cool things in the library was worth it on it’s own. I haven’t sold anything yet, but I can’t tell you how many pairs of kumiko earrings I have printed off for gifts this year. One of my good friends is an actress and she was wearing them in a photo shoot. It was nice to see.
I’m also paying for the convenience of it. The outline feature has been so useful. Yes, I can create an outline in Inkscape, but it requires so much clean up. A few weeks ago I tried to make a quick secret santa gift for my daughter’s friend. I cleaned up an image in my drawing software and put it into Inkscape to make an outline. It was a headache.
I decided to try to outline tool in the interface…it was like magic. There was no duplicating and deleting nodes and cleaning anything up. It seriously took the shape of the image that showed up and I adjusted the outline from there, and then I used to shape tool to make a circle to cut it out.
I’ve also conveniently used those same tools and the graphics library to create a bunch of quick products for other people, and the relief of not having to worry about commercial rights to those graphics was worth the price for me.
Would I pay 50 dollars for the same service? No. But I didn’t have to. Because I was able to use a coupon code. The price I pay is well worth the convenience to ME. But again, if you aren’t using ANY of it, like you create everything in your own design software and never use the features, then you can get away with never purchasing it. It won’t have a major impact on what you are already doing.
As far as faster processing speeds, I haven’t made anything that took much time to process anyways. I have noticed the button glowing before my computer has even processed how long the cut will take. That doesn’t help me much, because I never start a project until I’ve written down how long each cut takes.
The following links are random projects I used the premium features to create.
Wow you’re not wrong, that is incredibly misleading. I need to go back and pay for some artwork now. Thanks for the info!
As far as the speed, some of my projects that don’t even seem too complex do take 2-3 minutes to process through premium. I run a lot of small one-offs so for me this would add up to a pretty decent time savings.
I just canceled my premium membership. I wasn’t really using it, and I feel it’s high time I stand on my own two feet and start designing things on my own, no matter how much kicking and screaming I do.
I think one of the most useful tools with premium is the outline. It’s a quick way to cut an outline of a design on the fly. That alone is not worth the $50 by any means, however, I have hope for more stuff to come!!
The processing speed isn’t useful for me at all at this point, but because of the discount, I just hopped on board to lock in future features. I don’t need the onboard design features, but I agree with others… they’re handy to have in a pinch.
Thanks again for all of the answers. So, here is what I gathered as far as features?benefits you all mentioned.
faster uploads
cut out my engravings with shapes
royalty free images
tracing
Text/Fonts directly in app.
With discounted pricing right now, that’s $5/month per feature and take a gamble that more features are coming in the feature and retain the discounted price by buying now. I think I’ll take the gamble and give it a try.
This feels similar to my horse racing venture.
I recently bought into about 5-10% of 5 race horses, but all of them are not racing yet and are just training for now. Paying stable fees, training fees, etc. are all adding up with hopes of profiting in the future. Hopefully, GlowForge will deliver some new and exciting features and making the purchase now will pay off even more down the road. Good luck to you all and wishing you all success and a Happy New Year!
Nope. Uploads are only dependent on your bandwidth. The only performance difference, as already pointed out above, is the time it takes to “process” after you press the PRINT button. Upload and print times are identical.
What future features will be included with premium? I’m trying to figure out if I should lock in the 250/Yr discount, right now it’s not worth it for me…
very frustrating as I have only 5 days to lock it in.
I don’t think we know what future features will be included, and most of us simply decide to purchase or not based on the existing features. Nothing else is promised.
