Laser Design Basics 🤔

Glad it helped! :slightly_smiling_face:

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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most helpful post for me so far. Thank you!

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Thank you, this is a good resource.

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Thank you for this great writeup. Found it super useful!

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Welcome to the forum. As you have already discovered, there is lots of information available here as well as helpful people.

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This is a great post, I purchased and received my GF and have been so intimidated by it that I keep making excuses not to use it. I finally am pulling off the bandaid and searched high and low through the Community and found your thread. This is FANTASTIC, thank you for laying it out in terms I can understand and follow. Thank you for adding the pix to give me a connection of what I can expect and look for! Wish me luck, I’m ready to do this!

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We all wish each other luck. I hope you will be making lots of things and having fun now that you are jump in. When you have questions/problems, there are people here to help.

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I just stumbled on this when looking for something else. What a great resource! I’ve had my Glowforge 3 years and started working with an Epilog laser cutter almost 5 years ago. I wish someone had handed me this document then! It would have saved me a bunch of frustration as I just randomly clicked on things in Inkscape and hoped it would fix my issue! Thank you for the work you put into it.

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Great resource. A perfect place to start my design journey

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Amazing info! Wish I had seen this earlier! You have gone way out of your way to describe the basics and I am bookmarking for future reference! Thank you for such a wonderful contribution of your time and expertise @Jules

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As I am reading your pdf file I noticed on page 8 Raster files, you mentions tracing your raster images (recommended 300 dpi) to add cuts or scores around and/or within the image using the trace function within GFUI. I have only been able to do this by scanning a phycial copy of an image and not by uploading it. Is there a trick to it? I am using an image I created using my ipad and procreate with the background already removed.

Welcome to the forum.
The outline function is useful for making cut lines around images if you have a premium subscription. I believe this document was edited in 2019, and the interface has gone through some modifications since then. Have you tried opening your artwork in the bed, then clicking the + button and selecting trace function?

Thank you for your response. I do have the premium subscription. I have uploaded my work and attempted to trace but all it did was attempt to trace my glowforge tray and not the image I’ve already uploaded. I assumed that if the GUIF is able to vectorize a physical image from the machine it should be able to do the same with an uploaded image,no?

Live love laugh

Yes, the trace should be of the selected section of your artwork. For example, I just opened a blank design, added a circle, selected the circle and then selected the outline tool and an outline was placed around the circle. This should be what happens to your design. Can you share a screenshot?

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I see what you mean now regarding the trace function and the outline function. I was hoping to only use the trace. I am able to outline my work.

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