That’s weird. We’ve seen that happen in the forum using JPG more than once, but I haven’t seen PNG having that problem. I’ll be interested to see what comes back from this too.
What I REALLY want is for the GFUI to handle clipping paths properly so I wouldn’t have to use PNGs, but there will always be a need to handle raster files.
Also, the layer selection issue may be true even with a set of SVG layers.
As long as you discriminate vector layers by color you can select them individually. If everything is black the GFUI will treat it all as one even if you have 20 different layers.
Also of note, if you have 20 different colors on one layer the GFUI will treat those separately as well. You’ll also get a message box noting you have lots of colors in your file.
The art was vectors originally, but had clipping masks. So I was saving the clipped areas as a PNG and importing into GFUI. I guess what you suggest is reimporting the PNGs back into AI and then saving as SVC with embedded rasters. What a circular situation. I may try this though.
What I actually did is took the time to edit the objects to make sure that none were clipping and saved as a completely vector file.
@hansepe I’ve used colors to separate the items within a file into layers. Unless I’m missing something, that still doesn’t allow me to select one set of pieces based on the color/layer. If there isn’t space to cleanly drag a selection rectangle, then I have to tediously shift-click each piece. That’s if they’re not hidden behind another item that’s being engraved. It allows me to change the cut/score/engrave settings by color though.
Might try selecting the clipped object and just Object > Rasterize. Or the clipping mask and rasterize. And then may possibly need to release clipping mask if it doesn’t automatically.
I probably should have thrown the caveat in there that if you have some type of bounding box or shape everything in that shape will be handled as a single piece when selecting. So trying to move a shape from the center of a circle won’t work as you’ve noted. Can only print a couple of time using colors to turn on or off layers as needed so you can move things around. This does save material by nesting things, but is a PITA when getting just what I want cut and placed.
Thanks for asking. Not really. They made great suggestions, but don’t solve the problem that I’m having. I have already been using color to differentiate. The issue of selecting layers would still be something that should be in the backlog in my opinion. I just work around it, which is workable at this stage.
As an addendum to the feature ask, I would add enabling Off (ignore) and On at the left panel rather than a click down. It could be similar to the Adobe Illustrator checkbox for show/hide.
