Managing custom designs in the GF UI?

I have been using my :glowforge: quite heavily over the last 3-4 weeks. I am at the point where I am finding it difficult to find designs that I have uploaded. I am sure I’m a “light” user compared to many of you, since I’ve only had mine for a few months now. So I figured I’d come in here. I’m guessing that most people are not keeping their designs in the GF UI for very long. Do you delete them when your done?

I just went in and started deleting a bunch of designs that I probably won’t be needing in the near future. However, I was kind of sad doing this, because I am losing the settings and placement that I spent time on. I have been using the copy / paste functionality of the Glowforge to lay things out on materials, as opposed to doing all that in Illustrator and then uploading. (Copy/Paste works great if it is a single design- not so great if you upload multiple artwork).

It seems like adding some kind of folder structure to store our uploads would be a fantastic feature. I see that it has been requested here before. On a related note, is there an official way to make a feature request, or to check on the status of feature requests?

So what are some best practices for managing custom designs in the GF UI for heavy users? I’d love to hear how you are managing this. Since there is no folder structure in GF UI and it gets messy fast, are you just uploading a few designs at a time, deleting them when done? Are you keeping track of tips and tricks for that design in a spreadsheet somewhere? For example, I had a design with some coasters in it. It took up a full 12x12 sheet of plywood. I found it was best to cut it using two separate files, because I had to move the sheet to get the most out of the wood. Now that I’ve deleted those designs, I will probably forget if I ever have to cut a bunch of coasters again.

5 Likes

This is a common topic, because the lack of organization in the ui is such an obvious pain point. So GF staff has definitely heard feedback, for whatever that means.

Try searching the problems and support topic for “hopper”. If you don’t know the term, it’s the catch all phrase for “things gf says they know about but may or may not be working on”.

Since P&S is the only thread they monitor for ideas, that’s where you should post ideas/feedback about stuff like this. (Or email support)

Anyway to answer your question: I haven’t found a good way because even with a clever naming structure or something you still have to page through loaded designs and can’t search. It’s pretty much the perfect storm of awful user experience, I have no idea what they were thinking.

I keep my source files organized on my local pc, and only occasionally go back to find old jobs. It’s too much of a painful process to find the old jobs so I just reload and handle settings.

2 Likes

Since P&S is the only thread they monitor for ideas, that’s where you should post ideas/feedback about stuff like this. (Or email support)

That makes sense. I figure it’s not quite enough to be considered a problem, just more of an annoyance. Maybe I will go the email route for this particular request.

I keep my source files organized on my local pc, and only occasionally go back to find old jobs. It’s too much of a painful process to find the old jobs so I just reload and handle settings.

That is what I was thinking as well. It seems like that is really the best option right now. I suppose in the grand scheme of things it’s not a huge inconvenience, but it would make the GFUI a lot better if a simple folder structure could be added. Or, give me the ability to load all my designs on one page so I can search the page to find things. Or maybe just a search box so I can type it in, and things load.

Professionally, I am responsible for managing multiple software development teams for my company… we have both internal and external/customer based software that we build. Granted, our budget may be higher than what GF spends, but you can get a lot done with a few developers and this kind of functionality should not be difficult to add. We also utilize software to track feature requests, and communicate out to our customers periodically and release both front end and back end features every two weeks (using an agile scrum methodology). I realize GF is still in somewhat of a startup mode and may not have the funding, but I think doing something like this would go a long way. We also periodically send surveys out to our customers to get some good feedback, and it helps quite a bit in terms of knowing what to focus on and address feature wise.

Also… Just one last thing to add. I think for the product and amount of time GF has been on the market, they are absolutely kicking some butt. And it is quite impressive to see the journey, and overall I think they have handled things well with the launch and how they are running the business now- at least as an outsider. I am sure there is a lot we (as consumers) are not seeing that is happening behind the scenes, and I hope GF continues to grow and make awesome machines. I am a huge fan after being a customer for only a short period of time because the product is so amazing. I occasionally browse Facebook and I see all kinds of “hate” on Glowforge, and it’s really sad to see the ignorance out there.

1 Like

If GF had a nickel for every post that said “speaking as a super qualified engineer/software developer/product manager” and ended up saying something like “this would be simple to do”, they’d have enough budget to hire all of us :slight_smile:

This forum is absolutely infested with engineers and software developers (myself included). You’re definitely not the first to be irked by their communication processes and lack of updates.

7 Likes

This forum is absolutely infested with engineers and software developers (myself included). You’re definitely not the first to be irked by their communication processes and lack of updates.

Hah, that is definitely not surprising! :slight_smile: Birds of a feather flock together… I’ve noticed the same thing in all my other hobbies (drones, 3d printing, arduino/electronics, etc.). This is the first one that seems to have a little more crossover with more than hard core techies :slight_smile:

Yeah the crafty types show up here.

The slightly more rigorous crafty types. The average scrapbooker and Cricut owner isn’t the core here, but there is some crossover like you said.

2 Likes

One thing I’ll say about the average cricut/scrapbooking midwestern housewife: there are no better bargain hunters in the world. It astounds me to see how organized those communities are at finding deals on supplies.

2 Likes

Yeah! For sure. I felt a bit out of place when I did my first “craft show” (Santa Shop for my kids school, I posted about it…). Most of them were really saavy bargain hunters, and had all kinds of crafty stuff that they did by hand. Many of them came up to my table and wanted to bargain hunt some of my stuff, which I was more than happy to sell them at the end of it :slight_smile: (Most of them are friends of ours anyways…)

Is the average Cricut owner a midwestern housewife? :wink:

I’ll tell you this, midwestern or not, when you have a single income household, you learn to be thrifty. And quite a few of those women are contending with less-than-kind-and-supportive husbands, so I think they have additional pressure to spend as little as possible, even when they’re running successful businesses. But, yeah, they are excellent at sourcing things!

5 Likes

And quite a few of those women are contending with less-than-kind-and-supportive husbands

It is impressive what some of these women are doing, being in that kind of situation. I am amazed by the creativity that I see, and I think being under those constraints also somehow drives creativity.

I am thankful for the support I have of my wife, who also somehow manages to also work part-time and be involved with a lot of the activities that we have at the school, coaches a soccer team, etc. And for the record, she does have a Cricut, but I’m probably more geeked about it than she is! :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Yeah, I see just as many unsupportive wives. There is just less of a power dynamic when that happens. It makes me sad in both directions. Spending your entire life with a person who belittles the things you enjoy seems like a pretty miserable way to spend your time.

My husband and I give each other plenty of space for our hobbbies, which I am very thankful for (as is he!).

3 Likes

Suuuper offtopic…

Judging by the youtube tutorials, quite possibly? There’s definitely a demographic, even if I don’t have the specifics right. POCs are definitely not highly represented in that crowd, anyway. (or here)

3 Likes

#Truth
(also true that it’s off-topic)

1 Like

I had one of those. After 16 years I got smart and traded up. Best decision of my life. :wink: After 22 more years I’m finally starting to learn to just buy stuff. All that hunting for a lower price takes time away from the things I enjoy.

3 Likes

I hunt for bargains and do a ton of research because I kind of enjoy the process, but if I’m not enjoying, I just buy.

I dodged some serious bullets in my dating life and didn’t get married til my 30’s. I’m thankful I had enough experience by that point and I knew exactly what I didn’t want.

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 32 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.