My is here! I named him Jarvis after the computerized A.I. from Iron Man. (And just in case anyone checks, yes, I did say I was going to name my “The Transmogrifier”, but I lied changed my mind. @jordanloshinsky, the name’s all yours if you still want it. ).
Obligatory first project (one for me, one for my wife):
The box arrived in great shape and everything worked perfectly on the first try. Others have said that their was about as loud as their vacuum cleaner, but mine is much quieter than that (maybe I just have loud vacuum cleaners). My wife and I stood in front of it while it was working and didn’t have to raise our voices at all in order to be heard.
Ok, that’s all you’re getting from me for a while. I’m gonna go play!
So excited for you! Good luck sleeping tonight—I was still lying awake in bed at 4am thinking about what I could laser next or how I might resolve some random snags I hit earlier…
Yeah, I’m not sure how much sleep I’m going to get. I’ve stopped 'forging for now to give my brain some rest. Ran into some snags, but I think it has to do with Inkscape and the way it deals with SVG files. I vaguely remember someone on the forums mentioning that, but I’ll wait until tomorrow to look for it. Currently trying to turn off the brain and relax.
I hit a few snags with SVG as well my first day (yesterday)… I wanted to cut and it wouldn’t give me the option, then found other things I tried to engrave should’ve been quick and clean came out pixelated, blurry, and took forever. Found out today from a forum post that if you use the “Add Artwork” button, it’ll load whatever you upload as a bitmap, even if it’s vector.
So for example if you start with a Glowforge item (like the luggage tag) and click “Add Item,” whatever you load it will treat an svg like a jpg. Or if you try, like I did, to upload a raster engrave then later add an outer shape via the “Add Artwork” button, it won’t let you choose to cut that shape. You have to start with the home page and choose “Upload” to add a working SVG, then add whatever other artwork you want later (making it impossible it seems to add say the puzzle option later).
One other issue that made it worse for me: sometimes I added an svg and the layer preview would show, but there was no overlay to work with on the crumbtray preview. Turns out the overlay was there but it showed up incredibly tiny off in the corner and gray which makes it impossible to see. Kept trying to delete layers and couldn’t so started over to have the same problem again and again (even though the svg was like 6"x4").
Sometimes it is really hard to see the images. The colors just don’t stand out right until you tag them for an operation. I now only upload SVGs with a 20x12 artboard where I know that object is going to be. That helps it not to appear somewhere off in the gray no man’s land.
As to SVGs coming in as bitmaps when you add artwork. That’s something to be learned. Just about everything is on the forum that needs to be known, but sometimes you don’t know you need to know it or understand why until you have the laser and GFUI right in front of you. I do hope they have some tutorials in the works that assist in things like this.
Add this learning curve on top of a bunch of people you have over waiting to see the Glowforge do it stuff. It’s very humbling! It works just fine, with the right design files. Invariably we want to add something personalized that ends up taking us down a rabbit hole.
Tonight I made some custom rulers for my niece’s two sons. Put their name on them, just fine. But getting the proper vector logo with no clips in it of the Chicago Bears, The St. Louis Cardinals, and Sporting KC took a half an hour of cleanup to the files.
You’ll get there! Feel free to post a cry for help at any time. You’ll never know who is around. Usually someone with PRU experience and now the production units.
YES! I totally forgot you pointed out the 20x12 artboard thing in another post I read a while back, but now that you mention it I recall telling myself I needed to remember that!
And yeah—everything you say about not knowing what you need to know until the unit & interface are in front of you? I’d say that’s pretty accurate.
If you have problems with operations (things not working like you thought) and are able to explain your process clearly then the forum should be able to answer questions 90% of the time. Might take a few back and forth responses to work it out, but all the S/W quirks you have mentioned are well known to current users. Still need to send Support an email so they can clear up the limited documentation but a solution will usually come quicker here.
nice tip, thanks!
While navigating Inkscape I stumbled onto the fact that shift enables lateral scrolling. It has probably been mentioned here somewhere before.
is here! I named him Jarvis after the computerized A.I. from Iron Man. (And just in case anyone checks, yes, I did say I was going to name my 
).
