Recently Ive been playing around with slicing 3D models from fusion 360 using a plugin that you can get for it and it only exports in a few different formats. The only one that will work with a laser is a PDF. Not really a problem if its just one page but once you get more than one page it will only import the first page. Sure I can bring them into inkscape or Illustrator and convert them but it would be really nice if you imported a pdf it uploaded all the pages or gave you the option to choose which of the pages you want to upload. It might also work if I could change the order of the pages in the pdf but adobe doesnt seem to let you do that. If anyone knows any way of doing this or if im missing something let me know.
correction adobe does let you change the page number but only if you buy that feature. who thought micro transactions in computer software was a good idea!
When you drag and drop a pdf into inkscape it asks you which page you’d like to import. I don’t have it in front of me but it may give you the option to import multiple pages.
I just work in svg so this doesn’t come up much.
Im trying to cut out other programs all together so I can just drag a pdf directly into the glowforge app. Some of the models im working on have pages in the double digits so having to convert them all to svgs will take forever.
That’s tricky because if it’s a 8.5x11 size pdf then you’d be importing several full sheets of cutting. You’d have to tell the ui where to put things, etc.
Not impossible but definitely a corner case and some significant engineering challenges to manage.
In the end your best bet for now is probably to import things one page or two at a time just to keep complexity to a dull roar.
in the slicing software I can tell it the size of the material I will be cutting on so it only exports pages of that size. In this case im using 12x12 sheets of 3mm ply so it will fit the slices into those size squares and tell me how many sheets I will need. Also if the GF app just asked which page to upload it would only need to do one.
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Nice feature there. Maybe GF will surprise you but if the pace they’ve been releasing new features since last fall is any indication I’m afraid you’ll be waiting for a very long while for changes to the pdf import features.
Good idea for sure but I’d look for an interim workflow solution.
Thanks for the suggestion! I’ll share it with the team.
I’m going to close this thread - if you have any other suggestions, go ahead and post a new topic.