(1) I want to be able to design while at home (away from my Glowforge, which is at my workshop), then take those designs to make when I go back to work the next day. It is nearly impossible to see designs against the ever present black background shown in offline mode.
(2) Additionally, I’d like to be able to see how long those designs will take to engrave/cut when I’m offline so that I can plan out my next day of work. Is there any way to do either of these? Seems like there needs to be a sandbox to utilize without actually having to be connected to the Glowforge.
Thanks!
- There’s no reason to use the GFUI for this. Your design is exactly the same as it appears in your design application. So you can freely design as your normally would, bring it into the GFUI and GO!
- There is no way to see how long a cut will take without being online.
4 Likes
BUT, if you leave the machine on, you CAN load the artwork remotely and tell it to print so you can see the estimated time, and then just cancel the job. Bonus: if anyone is in the workplace at night, they’ll hear/see the Glowforge wake up from sleep mode and think the building is haunted. 
7 Likes
Or heck if anyone is there that you can trust to keep an eye on it, they could even load the material and push the button 
2 Likes
Perhaps it’s because I’m so new to this, but when I design in Inkscape, it seems that I need to design each part separately and load them into the GFUI as separate parts so that I can control the order of events in the GFUI. Otherwise, it may cut an outer shape out before it cuts out an inner shape - a big problem since the loose shape can move after being cut out.
Thank you. Unfortunately, I’m not comfortable leaving it on overnight when I’m not there.
That’s what sleep mode is for! 
As for order of operations in the GFUI, you can drag the thumbnails on the side into whatever order you want them. You can also control the order by assigning lower hex # colors to the operations you want to happen sooner.
2 Likes
Setting order of operations takes seconds, but if you want to have more control in your design file, you can use this palette.
2 Likes
I think the colors/operations thing is not as widely understood as it should be, especially when there are folks who have opinions about one color being more appropriate than another. Black of course gets first dibs, so easy enough after that. But then you need to get into color order and the swatches.
2 Likes
Thanks for the help everybody! As @geek2nurse mentioned, you can rearrange the print steps in the left hand column of your workspace by dragging the thumbnails into the desired order.
I’m going to close this thread now. Feel free to start a new topic if you have any other questions.