One of the best features Glowforge could develop would be

[evansd2]

The basic idea is comparing how much it costs you to conserve materials to the actual value of the materials you’re saving.

Generally the amount of labor time and effort to save materials is expensive compared to how much those materials actually cost.

So maybe this was the post?

Bed Size vs Cutting Dims - lots of wasted material

I’d recommend you actually do a cost analysis here (if you haven’t already) to see how much money you’re talking about. When I did it, I realized I was getting riled about literal pennies. There is a definite breakpoint where its just not worth the hassle. Of course the cost per square inch of material can vary widely, but even the high end of my costs was still really low. Take baltic birch plywood, which I get for about $9 for a 5’x5’ piece. That works out to a quarter penny per square i…

Or this?

Post Glowforge Cut - Trimming what Glowforge missed

I use a box cutter actually. Works fine for most things. If efficiency is your aim it might be worth it to spend the money on better materials with less inconsistency. I also tend to use a bit more power when I really need to be sure that cuts are going to work. It’s a bit slower but it’s worth it not to have to fiddle with it after the fact. I also design my cut sheets to have 10% or so extra pieces, so I automatically build in some loss. With most materials the cost per square inch is just …

Or this?

Save your material, don't waste it!

Good tip, though you say it will: “save you a lot of time”, that’s debatable if all you’re saving is one piece like this example. Recutting a single part like that is probably a lot faster than getting out the sander. As for the cost benefit: Looking at that part I am going to be optimistic and say it’s 12 square inches of material. Lets say it’s plywood, it’s almost not worth calculating the price for 1/8" baltic birch, but at the prices I get, it’s equivalent to about 5 cents (all amounts U…

Or this!

I wish this was a feature on the GF

If I have an oddly shaped piece of material, I will often take a photo of it, and trace it to scale in inkscape, to do my layout there. Any time it takes to do that is completely made up by inkscape’s better arrangement tools, especially when dealing with a design that is many small parts. If I am working with a piece of non PG hardwood, I’ll just make a rectangle in inkscape that matches the size of the material and do my layout inside that. At the end I’ll either delete the outline, color …

Or… this???

Exact measurements

So… You can do this. The best way I know how to do so is to snap the items together, then remove the overlapping path on one of the items. Here’s the thing though: the amount of time and fiddliness of that process might make it irrelevant in most cases. Set the arrange to put them .5mm apart, and you’re losing almost nothing. In terms of cost, the labor cost of fiddling with your paths far outstrips the costs of almost any material I can think of… Let’s do a real world test. [spacing] O…

Omg I’m a broken record. I need to spend more time lasering and less time armchair economisting.