What do you think of the idea of allowing “defaulting” operations based on particular color codes, so people could “pre-program” more of the work in the SVG file?
My issue is that since I’m engraving 20+ corporate logos into planks, and I’m manually aligning (btw, it looks like Geordi (la Forge) has great alignment, and i’m not SNAP-ing since the jig was just slightly off on the Mark size, I’ve only forgotter about 5 times to IGNORE the “inbound” snaps… so I’ve cut over the Jig scored snapmark targets to a cut and burnt crisp. Luckily, the round shape is pretty easily to align to, and there’s a good margin of error in the target base .
Prior planing is key! No mater what program you are using, I use Inkscape, color code everything. The snapmarks should be a color that is only used once that way if this is a template or jig you can turn them off after the first round.
Oh, and once in the GFUI, drag things up and down on the left so things happen in the order you want them to.
I still make way too many stupid mistakes but developing a “checklist” mentality helps a lot.
It’s a great idea, but it probably couldn’t be implemented in time to help you out on this one I’m afraid.
This is very low tech, but that kind often works best of all - stick a post-it note on the Start button of the machine with a reminder to “Check the Score”.
Issue is that I created 20+ files (each with a different logo) as the final step to customize each plaque. Therefore, unless there’s an inkscape trick I’m unaware of… Each file is new, with the logo centered into a rectangle, and I;'m manually setting the exact location of the rectangle (fixed position) that I previously aligned to the snapmarks. (I then delete the rectangle)
My issue was simply that when I uploaded each Logo SVG into the GFUI, I forgot to ignore the snaps, since I wasn’t actually snapping the logo into place (just manually aligning).
@jules - I wasn’t worried about this project - more for the broad community in general. I’ve got this one down to a science. Between the drafts, samples, and final ones for this project, I’ve printed about 40 double sided plaques, 3-4 per sheet of PG material (designed it for 3 per sheet, and just figured out an alignment that would allow 4. (Which will be good for the next 3 runs of this at 25+ per run over the next month).
Also realized that to avoid a boatload of weeding, I run a quick draft score around the set of planks (rectangle) as a “prep” design, which allows me to peel off the masking material easily, then I have a combined Engrave for each of the plaques, with the cut as the last step.
Once all of the fronts are done, I keep the last run PG sheet in place, and then load 3 (or 4 for future runs) into that template (which I taped to the side of the tray) to ensure perfect alignment for the back side run (without the indivudual logos).
A bit of rubbing with a (slightly damp) high quality paper towel is all that’s needed to remove the burn residue, and it is FAR less time than the weeding would be…
When both sides have been done, I start the logo process (Manual for this batch, SnapMark for those due later this month).
That was specified in the release, since this is a beta project. There’s a special team dealing just with Snapmarks, hence the Introducing Snapmark (September 2018) thread where we can post questions/problems.
The team that’s working on them is only checking on this thread for problems…the normal support team hasn’t seen them yet, so they can’t answer any questions yet. (If you’ve got an issue, post in that thread first.)
And the stroke weight on your design program shouldn’t impact the thickness of the Snapmark engrave, or the program’s recognition of them.
So if it’s not snapping, it might be a machine issue…post about it on that thread link.
I’ve done Plenty of Beta tests in my life - this is not the norm and I am very disappointed. I’ve been very dissapointed with GF customer support all around- but waiting 4 days for them to email me back that they don’t support a feature they created- is sad.
But the stroke weight if you are printing and cutting (in other words, printing out the Snapmarks on paper), can make a difference. They need to basically mimic what a score would look like.
The beta tests that I’ve done, they basically just collect info/notes on problems and don’t give any feedback.
@Jules, I don’t know if you might want to update the original post, but we just discovered that Inkscape 0.92 needs the snapmarks set to a different size.
At a Scale of 96, the snapmarks need to be .343 x .417 in order to work.
If you go to, I believe, Preferences > Tools, there should be an option for set Bounding Box to Use - either Geometric Bounding Box or Visual Bounding Box. What is selected here for you?
If it’s Visual Bounding Box (default, I believe) it will display the object size including the stroke. If you select Geometric Bounding Box, it will actually use the path for the size, not the stroke.
You’ll find that your tabs etc will probably fit better also
@jbmanning5 was spot on. When @bonny and I were troubleshooting, I had Inkscape on Visual Bounding Box and found that the size for the snapmarks needed to be the .343 x .417 when the stroke was at .01 inches thick.
When I changed the preferences to Geometric Bounding Box, the size of the .343 x .417 went down to .332 x .405 which is what we need it to be.
@jbmanning, when I was doing tabbed work I always ended up changing the View to Outline and matched up my tabs from there. Always got a better fit than trying to match up the strokes… now I know why. Thank you SO much for that little tidbit.
Well, let’s see how easy it is to reverse the edit history, cause I removed it completely thinking that they had made modifications to the Snapmarks size.
Got the snaps to work after upsizing them 1.333x in Illustrator. When exported as an SVG they are correctly sized and the alignment worked perfectly.
“Design Needs Snapmarks”. I cannot get the snapmarks to work, any ideas would be appreciated.
The attached example was not resized
Snapmarks are sized to 0.332 and 0.405 respectively.
Tried wide spacing the snaps using just two and then four. Same result.
Power cycled unit.
Used exactly the same SVG upload to make the jig and then tried to snap the engraving.
The original file is created in Illustrator and then exported for screens as an SVG. One possible problem that I’m wondering about - the cutline is 4 inches, but shows as exactly 3" on GFUI. So the snapmarks may be resizing as well to 75% of the Illustrator size. Could that be the issue?
