Load and Save Settings

I created a small bookmarklet plugin to allow for saving and loading project settings.

You can find it here, along with instructions for use:
GF Toolkit Bookmarklet

Please note that this is something I kind of hacked together to provide save/load functionality until Glowforge releases their own from the Hopper®™. As such, I don’t guarantee it’ll work for you, or in all situations, but it is working for me. Please read the entire page of info before trying to use this tool.

Disclaimer: I don’t work for Glowforge, and this code is not oficially supported by Glowforge.

Why did I make this? I had created a fairly complex design to use for testing materials, and when loaded into the UI everything was out of order, and the 37+ operations needed to be manually configured. I found this took me, on average, about 30-40 minutes, so I wasn’t able to run as many tests as I’d like. Being a web developer by trade, I figured I could create my own export/import tool.

A day or two later, and I have something that works (for me at least). Now I can load my design, load my settings file, and print, all in a few minutes. Whee!

Maybe as things come up, I’ll add more to this (hence calling it a toolkit), we’ll see.

Use with caution, double check everything after loading a saved settings file, and if you run into issues, let me know. I don’t, however, guarantee I’ll fix them :wink:

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Thanks for taking the time and doing this, and then posting the web app for everyone to use.

Wow! Thanks so much for creating and sharing this! Can’t wait to give it a go!

Nicely done. It’s worth mentioning that using this will refer back to your server for a js file, and that in theory you (or some enterprising bad guy) could change the code to do something untoward at any time.

Looking at the javascript in question:

https://elusive-concepts.com/projects/gf-toolkit/gftk.js

I don’t see a obvious reason why this couldn’t be hosted locally…? I’ll admit that my React knowledge is about zero though, so that might be the problem, there may be other referenced libraries I didn’t dig deeply enough to see.

Security is hard. Be careful out there :slight_smile:

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You’re right, it could, and I put those disclaimers on the page as well.

You could host it locally if you want, though getting that to work with some browsers is a pain. Especially when it comes to loading files. That’s why the source code is available. If you want to host it locally, feel free to fork the source, and change what you need to.

As for the react stuff, no, those hooks are all runtime client side, and everything else is pure JS (without libraries). The hosted aspect makes installation simpler (since there really isn’t any), and allows it to be kept up to date with improvements without having to do any playing with the code. To host it locally, you’d have to download it, and change come configurations (at the very least, if not rewriting some of the functions).

This is just cleaner, but does pose the security opening you pointed out, hence why I tell people to look at the source.

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Thank you so much! This is perfect for my needs.

I know it has been awhile since you created the toolkit… was wondering what feedback you have gotten on it since you shared it out.

I’m not sure it’s terribly relevant now that the GF UI saves settings?

People seemed to like it.

@evansd2 is mostly correct, it’s not terribly relevant anymore.

Although… The toolkit allows you to save multiple configurations for a cut project, and load whichever you need. So if you have one cut file that you use for multiple material types, it’s still useful as the GF UI will only save your last settings unless you remember to save them as custom settings in the UI.

Let me give an example. Say you have a cut file that engraves/scores/cuts that you use on birch plywood, acrylic, and leather. All with different settings. If you run through all of these, and cut leather last, when you reload the UI it will show the settings for leather, but it will have “forgotten” the settings for the wood and acrylic (again, assuming you didn’t save them as “custom” settings).

Additionally, if you have to rerun a specific part of a job (e.g. run another cut pass because the cut didn’t go through, but ignore the engrave and score)… the GF UI will remember the second cut pass settings and that you ignored the other steps… those settings are essentially “lost” in the GF UI.

Also, the toolkit applies all the settings you saved. So even if you’ve saved custom settings in the GF UI, you still have to go through and manually select them for each step. With the toolkit, it loads the saved settings for all steps. So if there’s a lot of steps, it can still be a time saver.

So, in some scenarios (mainly if you have a lot of files with a lot of steps [think 10+]) that you may run/ignore in various stages, and on various materials… it could still be very useful.

To be totally honest, however, I haven’t been using it myself since GF released their save settings UI improvements.

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