@ovm.steve Thank you for the reply! Yeah, the more i read and talk to people of GF the more i am seeing that perhaps sticking with a MBP is the best haha. I have also heard CorelDraw is a very user friendly software and am actually watching a few tutorials on it as we speak. I’ll have to dive a little deeper into it! As far as your kennel goes that’s amazing! We almost purchased a beautiful English Mastiff a few years back before getting our Bullies but at the time lived in a tiny condo and he would have been too much (But 2 huge bullies are ok i guesss?? lol) Thank you for the reply and greeting!
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You’re 90% there already 
And it’s a great logo. The things you’ll want to watch out for are if your designer used any clipping paths or vector gradients as the GFUI doesn’t understand those well. If not, you’re golden. Get familiar with the difference between cut/score/engrave and understand that operations are separated by object COLOR, groups and layers don’t matter to GFUI either, and you’ll be cutting away in no time.
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Thank you @ekla ! You touched on a very important subject and that is the color and how it relates to what the laser does. This is what i was trying to wrap my mind around. When you upload say a clean vector into GFUI, are you then able to select what you want and assign a specific color to that section of the program? Just wondering if it really is that easy!! If so that would be amazing!!
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You’re welcome! It’s almost that easy. You’d want to specify the colors in your design program BEFORE you upload the file to the GFUI. If you’ve done that then each color will show up as separate step on the left panel and you can give each one different settings.
Vector objects with line color and no fill generally default to cut - you can easily change to score or engrave.
Vector objects with a fill color generally default to engrave - you can easily change to cut or score.
Raster objects can be engraved only.
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Mighty helpful, there 
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All this and more is covered in the link I posted early on:
You should take a few hours to sift through all this, you will learn so much so fast, you have questions that you don’t even know to ask yet, this will give you a huge leg up!
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Welcome to the forum. I was a PC user for many decades until about 13 years ago when I switched our home to Macs and never looked back. I primarily use Illustrator on a MacBook Pro, although I also have a Mac Mini desktop and occasionally use PhotoShop and have dabbled in Fusion 360. Of course I am paying a subscription fee for the Adobe suite but it has been worth it to me as I used PhotoShop Elements for years and it was easier to transition. I tried Inkscape early on and despite having learned many different software programs over the years, for some reason it was one that was not messing well with how my mind works.
There is so much knowledge on this forum. Take some time and read as much as possible here. The search feature is your friend. I did it for a few months before my GF arrived and it was time well spent.
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Yep and a few fans here 
Honestly it’s mostly a matter of religion now. AI, Inkscape, Corel, Affinity, Fusion will all handle the 98% case of what you want to do. They are all just a little different. The remaining 2% tend to be things that are edge cases with solutions that might just be more convoluted depending on the software you’re using.
I use all of them depending on what I’m working on. Fusion is for my 3D work. Inkscape is what I teach with (it’s free so no student can complain they don’t have the software). Corel is my go-to because I started with it back when it came on about 30 CDs (seriously). AI is for when my kids send me stuff & I want to make sure nothing is lost in translation. Affinity is my “toy”. I don’t use it often but I was an original buyer and I like to keep up with what they’re doing and encourage upstarts 
So pick one that feels good to you at a price you like. Lots of tutorials and help out there for all of them. And every one of them has someone here who can help with GF specific issues.
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I meant to mention earlier, if you already have a Mac and are looking for a dedicated computer, the Mac Mini is a great choice. Best Buy almost always have refurbished ones. I have several around the house.
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Thanks everyone! I’m also new to Glowforge and to laser cutting. This is all really helpful, so thank you!
I have just 3 small projects under my belt, but ultimately I want to begin making life-size furniture using my Glowforge Pro. Anyone have that experience? What software do you use for that? Any favorite joins? Pitfalls to avoid?
I’m on a MacBook Air and iPad Pro. As a visual designer, I used to be all about Adobe products (Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign), but I’ve found several alternatives that I like much more, including some mentioned above. In no particular order:
- Affinity Designer
- Affinity Photo
- Shapr3D
I see a lot of you use Fusion 360 and/or Inkscape. Even with Shapr3D, I have very little experience modeling in 3D and I’ve never laser cut from a 3D model. How does that work? Are there advantages to using 3D software (parametric design, maybe)? Where does a hopeful, bumbling novice, like myself, start?
Thanks for your help!
Take a look at this video, it covers a lot of the basics of parametric 3D in F360, see if it’s for you.
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As the passthrough will only handle 5/16" thick (though only 1/4 is claimed) there is not much that can support much weight without getting into fancy geometry. Before my GF arrived I had a lot of design thought along that line but have only managed a few short tables. If you already have a shop making furniture, there are many things you can do as decoration, but all GF cutting to get there is very hard.
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Look, I never say never, but the 
is not the best tool for making furniture directly.
Two things I’d suggest. One, if you can afford it, buy a Shaper Origin. Huge overlap in workflows as it uses SVG as its input file. Cant drop that much more coin? Then get a regular router and learn how to do pattern routing. You can cut your patterns from Draftboard and then cut the final furniture piece from full-thickness stock.
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True, lots of solutions out there depending on your situation. I found the Maslow takes up too much space for me but for someone who had less of a premium on space it might be just right.
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If you are planning on household furniture you had better have that space, and since it works on the slant it takes a lot less space than the same capability gantry cutter.
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PS> Shapr3D is pretty costly @ $20 per mo/$240 per year and it’s like a lite version of Fusion360 which is free, tho not on avail on iPad. They function similarly for 3D modeling. The 2 free projects Shapr gives you sadly don’t get you very far at all.
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So I’m waiting for my Glowforge to arrive today (Yay!!) but in the meantime I’ve been messing around with Inkscape and for the life of me I cannot figure out how to do even the most basic of tasks. A little background, I come from a cad based working environment. I use a software called Flowpath to created DXF files. In that cad program it’s pretty standard( start from home position then draw out using coordinates. 10”X10” would be 10,10 etc. if I wanted to make a circle in the center of that I’d select a snap midpoint and click on the center of the box and enter whatever dimension I wanted the circle to be) now I’m going into Inkscape and it seems like you have to jump through a billion steps to do even the smallest thing like split and extend or break lines apart. I’ve seen a lot of videos and something someone creates in 15 minutes would literally take me less then 2 on my software. Very frustrating to say the least. I know there is a learning curve when trying new softwares but sheesh this is waaay to complicated I think. I am using a 2019 MacBook Pro to run Inkscape and it sucks because it seems Inkscape lags a lot in terms of dragging pics etc (you get a lot of skid lines while doing so). Might there be another free software that is more cad based where you actually enter dims etc? I’ve seen videos of people drawing freehand on an iPad or tablet… what do they use for that? Special iPad required? Sorry perhaps I’m just too used to traditional drafting software and totally in over my head on this.
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I’ve said it repeatedly, the best software is what you are good with.
If that works for you just output the DXF and then use Inkscape to convert it to a SVG.
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There in lies the problem. I only have the software available to me while I am at work, even still I downloaded a few DXF files off the Internet and I tried importing them into inkscape but they won’t open. I go to import,select the file and it won’t even show me a preview of it. 
noob problems