Hi! BIG NEWBIE here… I am trying to make a nursery room name sign. I got it to cut out small. But want it to be bigger. I have the glowforge pro and use Inkscape to create. Any tips or tricks for a newbie. I feel like I am going about this the hard way. Also, what is the best material to use for a name sign?? Thanks in advance.
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Should edit to say… I figured out how to create the name in inkscape but I am struggling with making it bigger and the glowforge recognizing the file.
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I’m not an Inkscape user, but I’m pretty sure there is a scale command in there. But you don’t even need to bother with it. Just save your file as a pdf (that way the text gets converted to outlines automatically in your export), open the pdf in Glowforge, and scale it there.
To scale, you can either click on the image and drag a corner, like you would in any graphics program, or you can do it numerically by clicking on the little ruler icon in the lower left corner of the screen.
As far as materials, most signs like this are made with either wood (which you can leave plain or paint) or acrylic, usually in the 1/8” (medium) size.
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Make sure you save your design as a SVG in inkscape. You can resize it on the GF to the maximum work area depending on the speed settings you have chosen.
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Thank you
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Ditto to what said about scaling in the Glowforge UI.
In Inkscape it’s under Object > Transform (or Shift+Control+M) that’ll get you a menu that offers a bunch of options. Scale, percentage, and Scale proportionally are the ones you want:
As far as material, if it’s something the kid could get their hands on, I’d go with acrylic.
If it’ll be hanging up high, then wood.
If you want to paint it, some unfinished plywood or draftboard.
If you want to leave it wood colours then I’d splurge on some pre-finished proofgrade in contrasting woods (like maple and mahogany, or basswood and cherry).
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I would wander through the catalog looking at ideas. If you are still in the first month most catalog items are free, Also you have access to premium text directly in the Glowforge UI. Cutting out connected text is often best done as a Boolean intersection in Inkscape. When using two layers that have to be just right, if you engrave in the second layer, what you cut out in the first they will pop in place easily.
If you want to use the passthrough early, I would recommend waiting till you have done a lot of other work on the machne, and even then throwaway experiments I would recomment first.
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