This drives me crazy. I have a cut file that is VERY specific on file size (light switch covers).
The holes have to be exact.
However, no matter what I do (resize Inkscape art board, try to reverse-engineer scaling, etc) when i drop my 3x5" cut file, GF decides it needs to be 4x6.
What baffles me is that this only happens with SWITCH COVER DESIGNS. All of my other projects come out to the size I created in Inkscape.
Looking at the xml, this looks like it was exported from illustrator. Illustrator exports can sometimes have scaling issues.
I would copy and paste your paths into a new Inkscape document to eliminate that as a possibility.
And that’s what I did for you.
I also fixed that you had 2 copies of the paths on top of each other.
I also fixed your color scheme so that the inside pieces will come up to be cut first (check the forum for custom palettes for more about that)
I also merged your cutouts into a single path (blue) and grouped everything so you won’t accidentally misalign anything by dragging it around.
Just best practice stuff.
It may still be screwed up somehow, I don’t know, but this will eliminate a lot of “this svg is janky” issues that come up. Sometimes pulling everything into a plain inkscape svg is the fastest way to solve issues with a downloaded svg.
Thank you! I guess when I get “free” designs, I get what I pay for.
As a side note, I re-created this by hand in Inkscape, and the center cut plus screw holes came out right, but the exterior dimensions went slightly bigger, which I can live with.
I bet I know why. do you know the term “visual bounding box”?
Visual bounding box includes the stroke when selecting an item.
Geometric bounding box is the exact size of your paths.
With visual box you get a perfect height of 5":
But with geometric you will see that the actual size is incorrect at 4.985".
This effect is more pronounced with thicker stroke sizes. Here I have chosen a 0.1" stroke, and sure enough the visual bounding box says 5.085" tall.
Geometric should be the default, I don’t know why Inkscape doesn’t do that. Well, ok yes I do, because in print the visual box is often what you want, and Inkscape thinks print first, not laser. Anyway is that your issue?
I have not. However, if the resizing happened to both the interior and exterior “box” then I would not be so vexed. It’s only the exterior that this happens on when I make these.
But, I think you for the “clean” pattern and I will practice safe downloading in the future!
I will change that default and see if it is kinder to me in the future!
Agreed!!!
Mine always opens with geometric bounding box. I never knew this was a thing.
Once you set it, it’s sticky. But the default installed behavior is visual bounding box. It always has been ever since version 0.96b over 7 years ago.
If you’re exporting from AI as @evansd2 noted above just copy and paste into the Glowforge App.
And without doing the math I’m sure if you divide 72 by 96 and multiply by the 4.whatever you’ll get the 3 inch dimension you’re expecting.
Thanks again!
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