Well, first off…let me tell you I think you made a wise decision as far as the laser you chose, because you will be able to use it to make very large 20" wide things. Soon.
The bad news is…there’s a bit of a learning curve ahead of you. It’s not something that you can’t handle if you don’t get into too much of a hurry about it, but you will probably want to give yourself more than a week to pick up a few things - maybe start a little smaller and build up to the super-sized world map.
There’s another reason for my suggesting that…the official Passthrough software that will make that process extremely easy has not been released yet. Once it is, you will be able to tackle that map very quickly.
In the meantime, if you absolutely have to do one now, you can, but it gets into some slightly more advanced knowledge of how to use the design software that you’re not yet familiar with…which gets you back to learning a few things first.
The first thing you need to do is learn the few rules about preparing your files for the Glowforge interface - (like bitmaps are raster images and they can only be engraved - there is no cutline associated with them), so I’m going to point you at a few short tutorials that explain working with vectors and raster images in the interface.
(You can probably adapt them to work with the program you are using, or one of the free alternatives, but I’m not familiar with Procreate, so can’t give you any direct suggestions.)
Read through these though, in this order, and you’re still going to be months ahead of trying to learn them yourself, and a heck of a lot less frustrated. (Most are just a couple of pages long.)
Here you go:
Then if you want to learn how to use some of the popular Design Programs quickly, the Matrix has a lot of tutorials and video links showing the best of the tips and tricks:
For using the Glowforge:
For Using Photoshop, GIMP and Paintshop:
For using Illustrator, Inkscape, CorelDRAW and Affinity Designer:
For using Fusion 360, OnShape, Openscad, Rhino, etc.
Just remember to have fun along the way! You’ll be knocking them out in no time.
