Hello oh masters of the Glowforge! I’m hoping someone (here’s looking at you Jules…) can give me some pointers here. I’m trying to test out some engraving on veneered plywood before I give anodized aluminum a go. My friend sent me the attached .svg and when I convert the text etc to engrave and the boat lines to score everything looks OK (but the scoring is obviously not very good in the wood with repeated burns close to each other), so I wanted to engrave the whole thing. After changing those lines to paths and engraving I seem to be missing some detail despite the image looking OK on the browser…what am I missing? Stroke thickness was 0.2mm before conversion…
Not at computer to look at in Illustrator, but I can tell by looking at it that a lot of those paths end up overlapping one another. Where you have paths overlapping, it will effectively knock out the engrave in that area.
You should be able to use the pathfinder tool for whatever vector program you are using and union, or combine the lines, which will basically unit them into a single shape.
I agree with what @jbmanning5 said, but since I’m able to look at it in Illustrator, I can tell there’s one other thing you need to do before using Unite.
Ungroup the text from the drawings, then select all the drawings. Click on Object > Expand. Then with everything still selected, immediately click on Unite in the Pathfinder menu.
That will take care of it. Currently, those are unfilled strokes, not fills for engraving. And when they overlap, they knock each other out. Combining them with the Unite tool will stop that.
Assign a Stroke color to the strokes for the drawings.
Ungroup as many times as needed to get to the point where each line has its own selection box. (A bunch).
You might also have to check to make sure you are not trying to combine multiple compound paths, which is where that open shape problem is coming into play…if you can join the edges before you use Path> Stroke to Path on the outside edges of the top boat drawing, you might need to do that first. (Just caught it…it might be a problem.)
Use Path>Stroke to Path on the completely ungrouped drawings.
Then use Path>Union.
You should wind up with a Fill color but no stroke color on the drawings, and they will be a compound path. (You’ll be able to see the grid behind it if you turn on View>Page Grid. )
(Oh, and you’re also going to have to treat the Text the same way…just Path> Stroke to Path.)
If when you use Path>Union a bunch of stuff disappears then Undo and try Path > Combine This will usually sort out what is outside and what is holes but if it does not then you need to Path>Union all the outside bits, and then Path > Union the inside parts and then Path>Difference the two.
Thanks for all the help @Jules, @jbmanning5, and @rbtdanforth! Hey @nickstock, did you get your file set up how you wanted to? If not just let me know and we can investigate it further.
Thanks for the update. I’m glad to hear that your print turned out well! Since you’ve been able to get your design working I’m going to close this thread. Should you run into any other problems please don’t hesitate to open a new thread, or email us at support@glowforge.com and we’ll be happy to help!
