Just some musing

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I’ve just been thinking about a few things.

• I’ve noticed for some time now, the explosion of posts in the forum as more and more people get their Glowforges. The tone of posts has changed some since many of us started on here over two years ago.

• Now that I have my very own Glowforge, some of the silent urgency is now gone. I no longer have that niggling feeling in the back of my head that says I need to hurry up and make stuff before they take my machine back. She’s mine…she’s all mine, now! I’m enjoying spending more time designing without the need to rush.

• My latest discovery is very cool…that dang ol’ clip paths can optionally be engraved now! Not that I want to engrave them…but that I can ignore them and go on with everything else is great. And, until only very recently, that message doesn’t even pop up anymore, either…saying that ‘we can’t process clip paths’. This has been huge in my book.

That’s all. For now. :slightly_smiling_face:

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:heart::heart::heart::squeee: I’m so glad you have your forever machine Xabbess. It’s like the frantic dating period is over and now you get to settle into a slow and easy long term relationship :slight_smile:

…and what??? I had given up dealing with the devil clip paths and hadn’t even noticed!!! This is huge
!

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Cool discovery although I’m pretty well trained to not having clipping posts at this point.

The message du jour is for PG engraves with high LPI

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I too would prefer to eliminate clip paths, but I’m still not sure how to do it in Affinity. Until I figure that out, I’m very grateful that I don’t really have to worry about it in the UI. And yes…the engraving has become better and better!

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Yup. Although if they don’t start fixing the stuff in GFUI that’s broken/Kludgy it’s going to be right back to where it was when the other half of the US Preorders are all delivered.

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Being a somewhat dense old man, can someone explain (in simple terms) what a clip path is and maybe how to get rid of them in the source design?

Thanks!

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Clip paths are basically filled shapes in a vector program that cover other filled shapes. They add a top cover on and mess up the engrave. Check out this thread and follow links.

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More annoyingly, some software formats use them without you adding them. For example, many PDFs have a clip path around the shape of the page.

Xabbess, I’m so delighted that we’ve gotten to start seeing what you can really do! :slight_smile:

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Thanks for the quick replay, @marmak3261! I am certainly guilty of doing that in some of my designs. I hope that the GFUI will be able to process them fully some day.

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You CAN process them fully now! :grin: You have the option to choose what you want to do.That’s why I was so pleased. You don’t even get a warning anymore. When you upload an image that has a clip path, you will see two things in the thumbnail views along the left side of the GFUI…the part where you enter settings. One will be a dark square/circle/shape that offers to engrave (that’s the clip path), and the other will be the actual image that you wanted in the first place. You can just ignore the dark clip path and engrave the image.

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Not any more…!

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And yet the latest Latest Improvements post is still this silly thing: https://glowforge.com/latest-improvements/latest-improvements-on-the-side. Sigh.

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