Laser Maps for Family

Made on a Glowforge
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Using some lessons learned from earlier maps, I was able to crank out a few 11"x14" panels as a gift for my sister who just graduated from med school and is getting hitched. What an overachiever! Each panel has a 0.5" heart where she or her fiancé lived during their journey. They’re a military couple, so I’m ready to bet these will not be the last panels in their story!

Materials:

Steps:

  • Made a Glowforge-friendly template at SnazzyMaps
  • Downloaded raster images of the appropriate areas
  • Import to Inkscape, use trace bitmap function
  • Select roads, remove fill, set stroke thin (0.1mm)
  • Use the boolean operations as necessary to crop image and add hearts

Time:

  • Design: 10-15 minutes per map
  • Laser: 40-100 minutes per map, depending on detail

Maps
Maps1249×400 256 KB

PNG
PNG530×943 228 KB

76 Likes
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Cool maps, great pics, and nice info. Thanks for sharing.

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the little heart marker is nice and subtle

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those look great.

it looks like the “glowforge style” you made must not be set to public.

image

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Thanks for calling that to my attention! I’ve set it to publish, and the link should work within 48 hours.

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thanks, i like the way yours turned out and the other two that show up when i searched glowforge didn’t look as nice.

i’ve used snazzymaps for work stuff before, but hadn’t gotten around to a laser cut map yet.

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Oh man that’s stellar work!

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Searching “laser” gives some decent templates. This one is very similar to what I used, but with different stroke weights: https://snazzymaps.com/style/235205/laser-cut-map

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As tclear01 mentioned, if you search the templates (Explore Styles) with “laser” or even “glowforge” it should return some items that might work or be close.

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Woah. These are gorgeous, and thank you SO MUCH for the execution info! I’ve been wanting to give this a try!

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Hmm it’s not clear how to download SVGs. I see export image, but that is talking about pixels, so I assume it’s raster. Is this a “you have to register” thing?

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Oh, very nice gift! I would think they would be thrilled. The addition of the hearts is a great idea.

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Good catch! I downloaded a raster image (the bigger the better for accuracy) and then used Inkscape to trace the bitmap and produce a vector image. I’ll edit my original post.

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You can download svgs from open street map. Your way is probably smoother in terms of workflow but OSM scales since it’s svg.

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Wow. These are fantastic!

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Looks nice. Your maps turned out so much better than mine did.

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Definitely on my “OMG I gotta do that” list. Your results are stunning. Really dig the hearts.

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18

Very cool! I’ve been wanting to try something like this.

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19

Lovely momentos!

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These are exceptional! :heart_eyes:

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