Line thickness question

Everything Else
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New to lasers and new to illustrator. I’ve been using photoshop for years, but never had a need for illustrator, until now. I just received my Glowforge yesterday and I love it already. I only did 3 parts, but it will be a great addition to my maker cave.

Question:
How do I make lines different thicknesses when I import my svg into the Glowforge. Everything looks good in illustrator, but when I put it in the Glowforge app, the lines are all thin lines and when I change the line I want to be engraved, it engraves a whole circle.

The red line is a cut, the blue line should be engraved that wide, and the green line is a score.

image

image

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If you want to engrave that blue line and have it show up at the thickness you’re seeing in Illustrator, select it then object > path > outline stroke.

Applying a width to a stroke doesn’t actually change the vector path in Illustrator, which is why the GFUI sees it as a thin line. Outlining the stroke converts it to a vector object that the GFUI can recognize.

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That was perfect. Thank you very much for the assistance.

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You’re welcome!

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Outline Stroke, Expand Appearance, and the various Pathfinder operations will be your best friends.

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As always there is more than one way to skin Bézier curve in Illusrator. You can also use Object -> Expand.

expand1

Selecting just stroke will give you the outline of the black circle.

expand2

Selecting fill will give you the white disk from the inside. So if you select both you will get two objects.

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I just learned about Shape Builder yesterday – it’s now on my Illustrator > GF short list too.