This type of tutorial takes a good bit of effort to write up, you’re generous to post it.
I think you might find the Inkscape command “stroke to path” (or its equivalent in other programs) very useful. All of the steps that involved exporting to a JPEG and converting it to an svg can all be skipped if you use those commands.
Secondly the kerf for the glowforge is about 0.006” for most 1/8” materials. Your estimate of how much to correct for it is about ten times too large (your recommended correction of 1/16” is 0.0625”). If size accuracy is important to your design this is a large error.
So as an Inkscape user, if I were in your shoes I’d
- draw my pattern
- set the stroke to .131” (1/8 + 0.006), this handles all the kerf correction
- Path->stroke to path
- Select all and do path->union
- Unset the fill color
- Set the stroke color and thickness so you see the outlines. (Like black and 0.01”)
And you’re done with all the path work. If you want to be very precise you can color code things so the outline cuts last; it’s the best practice for accuracy. To do that:
- Select your unioned path
- Path->break apart (now it’s a bunch of small shapes)
- Select just the outline path, change it to a different color from the inner shapes
- (Optional) group all of the shapes so you don’t jostle anything if you need to move the art around.
If you’re not an Inkscape user that’s ok. Any fully-featured vector editor will have equivalents to these commands.
I think you’ll find that this type of method has some advantages over the one you described.
*It’ll be faster: the steps I described take under a minute with practice
- It’ll be more accurate: converting to jpeg and back is always an approximation and can lead to inaccurate shapes
- It doesn’t rely on any converters: no more saving out and uploading to anyplace
Give it a whirl, I think you’ll like it.