Laser Design Basics šŸ¤”

Glowforge Tips and Tricks
25

Thereā€™s a second tutorial here that expands a little on the concepts that you have asked about here. (Easiest way to hit most of the questions in one goā€¦youā€™re on the right track.)

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26

Thank you very much Jules,

will definitely review it all.

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27

I went through lots of the documents you shared Jules - they are fantastic. One problem I am encountering though is that GFUI canā€™t deal with dashed lines, it changed them to solid lines and as result the design changed. Do you have any tips on why this could happen?

28

Here is a video Jules did regarding dashed lines. One of the great things about this forum is the search capabilities. I suggest you type ā€œdashed linesā€ in and you will find much more on this topic.

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29

Thank you for the tip, but I am not using Inkspace, I do all my designs in AI. I have already created a dashline in AI, but GPUI changes it to a solid line.

30

We have a tutorial for doing them in AI as well. (Itā€™s different in different software, so you always want to specify which program youā€™re using when asking about anything.)

Dashed lines are an appearance, they donā€™t actually consist of short paths. We have to convert them before loading them up to the GFUI.

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31

Thanks Jules, will do :slight_smile: interesting that we have to create a brush for this. There is a dashed line in the stroke section and with Epilog there is no problem just to etch/engrave them as such. Very surprised to see that Glowforge requires a certain method to create them and then you have to convert them.

32

There are many ways to create them. In inkscape they can be dashes, or space aliens or whatever depending on what you want.

33

Yeah, different strokes. :smile:

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34

A dashed stroke is one of many styles that can be applied to a path. The GF doesnā€™t interpret stroke styles, it just follows paths. Developing additional capabilities to interpret styles would cost $$ - which is part of the reason why commercial products like Epilog cost significantly more.

GF is the Cricut/Silhouette of the laser world.

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35

If you want to see what the Glowforge will ā€œseeā€, go into outline mode ; control or command - y.

The reason they need different methods is because of how they interpret vector elements.

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36

Thanks for sharing!

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37

Thank you so much. This helped me sort out the difference between cuts, scores and engraves.

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38

Great! Iā€™m glad it helped! :grinning:

There are a couple of other tutorials here that will get you up and running very quickly:

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39

Welcome to the Glowforge Community @LuckyV!

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40

Iā€™m new here and I have just gotten my Glowforge. Ran two different things last night. One engrave and one score and this information would have been super helpful last night, but going forward, this is going to be a huge help! Thank you so much for putting this together!

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41

Glad it helped! :slightly_smiling_face:

42

Thank you! It is unreasonable and perhaps indicative of a degree of insanity the way I feel about R2D2, I mean, my Glowforge. I am so happy to be part of this community.

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43

most helpful post for me so far. Thank you!

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44

Thank you, this is a good resource.

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