Layout Save

My Glowforge is in my shop, I like to work on the software end of projects at night in my office. It would be awesome to have the ability to layout cuts in the UI and be able to save them. This would also be nice for just being able to layout multi artwork projects and save them for future prints.

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I’m not sure if we’re talking about the same thing, but you can already have projects layouts saved and ready to burn without your GF being on hand. When you add and open a new project to the GUI, how you leave it when you close the GUI is how it will look when you open it back up; it saves your layout. It can sometimes bite you in the butt though becasue if you delete a piece of your file and close the project, the deleted object will still be gone and there’s no way to get it back without reloading the file. (That’s why there’s an option to open a copy of a project listed in your home page and you can preserve the original file. )

For example, while my GF is cutting one project, I open a whole new GUI in another tab in my browser and work on a different project/layout. I get it to the point of just needing to hit the print button to process it. If I leave the project and close the GUI, when I come back it’ll be all ready to go just as I left it.

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Thanks for the reply! We are talking about the same thing. I know it will save the layout as in revert to the last session, so the one I did tonight should show up tomorrow when I am in my shop. It would be good for me to be able to save this, do another and save it, etc, and then burn them one after the other tomorrow. I am doing leather, so laying out parts to get the most of the material.

I do this all the time. I do my design work away from my Glowforge area, and load the files into the user interface, even down to setting the material and ordering the cuts and such. I get home from work pretty late in the evening, and working on design files on my laptop in bed is one of the ways I wind down before I go to sleep. :slight_smile: Then the next time I have a day off, they’re all ready to go and I can just stick the right material in and zap them out one after the other. (That’s how I did my My Almost-Clock last weekend!)

I guess I’m not understanding where you’re running into difficulty with your workflow. What am I missing?

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I think I get what you’re saying. So you want to save the multiple steps in one project so you don’t have to adjust things after each step? If that’s the case, you can incorporate the “make a copy” feature. Make the first adjustments of the file and close the project. Now open that first step in your project as a copy, make the changes for the next step in your process and save/close that one. Now rinse, lather and repeat as many steps as you need. Each separate file on your home screen will be the next step in your project. Is that what you’re looking to do?

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Here’s a shot of my GUI with all the different clock parts in it. I saved them one after the other, just like you described, and then cut them one after the other on my day off when I had time to work on it.

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Except that I forgot to rename the last one with the name of the material like I had all the others. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: I guess I was tired by then!

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My excuse is usually the pain meds had kicked in lol. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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That’s pretty much the same workflow I use, too. Seems an efficient use of time.

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I am having trouble communicating what I am talking about so I will use a specific example from last night. I am cutting 5 different pieces for a leather passport holder. I have each piece as a separate import. I loaded all of them, laid them out so that they would fit a piece of proofgrade leather and there they sit. Now, they are still there because I haven’t had time to go out to the shop and cut them (busy Friday). So, if I wanted to now layout cuts for a wallet project I would either have to go to the shop and cut my project, so that I can clear it and start laying out the wallet, or I would have to clear it and then re-layout the passport holder when I was finally able to cut it. I am going to make multiple passport holders over time, so I would like to save this layout. I guess I could go back and make one file with all parts in it and load that, but I also like the flexibility of having various pieces in separate files for when I am not using a nice rectangular piece of leather.

Are you reusing the same project file over and over by deleting the artwork and replacing it with new artwork? You don’t need to do that. Exit to the home screen to start a new project for your wallet. Your passport layout will stay just like you have it in its own project file.

The screen where you can actually see the bed of your GF is the screen you see when you are in a project file. When you click on Home at the top of that screen, you exit to the main app screen which shows all the different project files you have ready to use (as shown in my screen shot above).

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Ha! Thank you very much. I haven’t been using the software long, only 4 cuts so far. It was not obvious to me that the icons on the home screen were projects, I thought they were specific files. Thanks for the help and no wonder no one knew what I meant lol

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