Ditto that, me. Thank you! I’ll sure give it a try. Yes, you’re on the money…I’ve been a little afraid to change anything…afraid I’ll catch something on fire. Need to get feeling more comfortable.
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OK…two last questions for anyone…then I have to dedicate several hours to my regular life.
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When I downloaded henryhbk’s svg. into the design section of the app, it was a different size than the one I made, using Super Vectorizer. (this is all testing, on my part). Someone (maybe nunzioc?) mentioned this discrepancy in another thread. Anyway, why is that…and which one should I use.(I have them labeled so I can tell where they originated)
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The svg. from Henry and ones that I’ve made for myself, all show up as only engrave…no cuts. Do I need to make my own cutting frame template to use in addition to that?
Thank you all so much. I’ll be back later.
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It imported at 4 1/2" for me. But that is a special topic traced SVGs in different programs from bitmaps. They will be different sizes depending on resolution and settings in each trace program.
Are you uploading the SVG from the design space or importing it into the user space. SVGs will only import as SVGs in the design space. If you import/place an svg into the workspace, it will only allow a raster of it.
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We have to load the SVG files from the Design Catalog page. (They don’t load correctly now if the Add Image button is used. Probably will be changed later.) 
The file Henry loaded isn’t going to work as it is. (There are other steps that need to be performed on it.)
You guys are leaping ahead fast into design related issues…if you have time, it might not be a bad idea for you to review the overview tutorial that I have up to this point…it will help to understand the difference between the engraving and cutting processes.
Let me know if you want to look at it, I’ll PM it to you.
In the meantime…
This first larger batch shipout of pre-release machines has highlighted a few assembly tweaks that Glowforge is probably working on first, so I’m not going to pester Rita for a place to load the tutorials up yet.
And I don’t know if trying to work out all of the “learning to design” related issues here on the main forum is the best of ideas…there is going to be a lot of “helpfully incorrect” information given, and a lot of people will wind up confused if they are following along with the threads. Some of the onlookers might even get scared and cancel their orders, which is unnecessary. The steps are easy, it’s just a matter of getting them loaded up.
If anyone just got a pre-release unit and you have a design related question or questions - I’ll be happy to work with you off board until we can get the tutorials loaded up. Just send me a PM. There are a couple others who can also help - I’m sure they’ll speak up if they have time to help.
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We’ll still take any design tips and hints however !!!
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Yeah, no problem sharing those. 
Some of these issues are getting into the weeds for different programs though, like AI and Inkscape.
It could get confusing fast.
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Don’t know if we can make post decisions based on what may or may not be confusing or misleading. We just do our best for the issue at hand and try to be clear. From the way I experience it, and the way folks seem to participate, the topics themselves seem fairly enclosed as to meaning. And the nature of the knowledge shared on Discourse is ephemeral, Witness what happens when you go back to an old post and add some more information. “Necro”? I call it follow up. For example, this topic is developing into an understanding of the relationship between vectors and rasters and how the Glowforge interprets them. This may change for many reasons, but making a point about how that particular vector might or might not work really develops the topic. If someone decides to address why that vector won’t engrave well and demonstrate, it would be better off starting a new topic in and of itself. In fact, it works pretty well as is but as you note, works in the opposite way of intended. As is it engraves what is intended to be left as relief.
This is a crucial aspect of design and does deserve its own topic. I’ll see if I can work on that.
In the meanwhile, many of these crucial distinctions just have to come out and be dealt with as they arise. There is no way to control learning from a developmental, step by step method. That is up to the user to sort out. The topics seem to be all about solving a particular problem and then you add the skills and knowledge needed to solve a particular problem.
It’s always going to be a crash course. At least, that’s what I have discovered.
Here is a shot of what happens if you bring the vector in as is and let the Glowforge engrave it.
In the end it is simple enough to bring into a drawing program and redo to engrave what you want. But it is a major distinction and does take some thought.
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interesting, I actually like that quite a bit. All you would need to do is invert it to get something closer to what the original was. If you’re proficient with AI you could have set your trace up that way in the first place.
Granted, I haven’t been able to try anything out, but I did a quick conversion on the merlin artwork @Xabbess posted in AI. This was down and dirty, 3 minutes or less. If anyone wants to give it a shot I’d be curious to see how it works. This should be a SVG. All paths were expanded except for the red one (which I made red for cut). With more work I could certainly do a better trace, but then again, how good is good enough? 
edit: problem uploading SVG - Give me a sec.
Can’t get it to display right in Discourse, here’s the file though if anyone wants to try it and see what happens.
Merlin SVG.zip (203.7 KB)
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Oh, oh… I came to piece with the voices long ago.
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It’s great to see some of the near misses along with the great results. It makes me that much more excited to try it myself.
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Okay, quick explanation without details on both of those SVG files that folks have uploaded from Illustrator.
When an SVG is exported from Illustrator and loaded into the GFUI, any white fill color is treated as a solid engrave color.
So after you have performed a Live Trace in AI, you have to subtract any enclosed white fill areas (surrounded by black) from the black parts before saving the SVG so that the GFUI will ignore them. Otherwise it colors those in as an engrave right along with everything else.
And you wind up with a big black circle.
Is that what you were seeing? 
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Yea it was. I’ll pull the SVG back into illlustrator and see what it does, because the AI file had no white fill areas. Those had been deleted (or actually never created in the first place. For AI. You can specify "ignore white space"
As part of the trace. Conversion to SVG may be blinking that.
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I think it does. (The SVG export.)
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No idea how the GFUI interprets files, since I don’t have a Glowforge yet… but, one of the things about Live Tracing an image is that you can end up with a file that looks great on the surface but will be a nightmare when the Glowforge processes it.
I’ve said it a few times but it’s going to be very important to view your document in outlines mode to see what’s really being sent to the cutter.
For example, here is a close-up view of the file @kennethclapp posted:
Without outlines (I’m zoomed in at 1200% here FWIW)
And viewing outlines - see all over the overlapping paths? Those are areas that are going to have multiple passes over them which is going to 1) take much longer to print, 2) obviously they are being hit with the laser where they overlap, and lasering is a subtractive process, so you’re going to be subtracting a lot more in certain areas.
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You’ll be happy to know that the recommendation to “Check it in Outline Mode” appears in about half of the tutorials we wrote up.
Because you ain’t just whistlin’ Dixie! Hidden paths and duplicate lines will make a mess of a file and frustrate the daylights out of you if you don’t know to look for them.
And sometimes, even if you do.
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Heres my contribution. The zip has an SVG with everything in vector and a cut line around the perimeter ready to go in the GF.
merlin_tak.zip (350.9 KB)
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Open the SVG file in AI (not the AI file) take a screen shot, and post it here. (It might be Discourse corrupting the uploads but I need to see what you see.)
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Can you zip up that AI file and load it? (I want to take a closer look.)
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