A basic coordinate system not scales… a machine home or zero or something similar. And some functionally as follows:
The ability to make a 3 inch by 3 inch square with an 8mm(.3150) hole dead center or on a location from a set zero. I would like to add .25 radi to the corners of the square. A 30mm diameter circle- or a hole pattern with 30mm spacing. (Your text here) on a 3 inch radius. Etc…
These are very common features in industry. And would vastly expand the capabilities of this machine.
I would love the ability to draw conversationally. Please look up what conversational programming is! It would be extremely easy to add to your existing premium service! Which I have but won’t keep unless I see something like this. The ability to draw a line in or line out - a square, arbitrary, or circle shape… basically telling it to hold the dimension to the inside or outside of shape… And let it figure where it wants to ramp in and out, and give the user a little more control. Please let me know if this is something you have any interest in at all. I can help if need be. I do not want to be forced into adobe illustrator or inkscape graphical software- it takes so long to finish a simple project that way and I believe this would help tremendously. My two cents.
-steven-
They are definitely planning to continue to develop the Premium features and are always looking for input. You might want to make sure they see your suggestions by posting it in a new thread in the Problems and Support section. (That’s the only one they monitor regularly, and where they prefer that we post suggestions, to make sure they see them.)
I find Inkscape to be very quick for stuff like this… It’s an investment to become proficient at design software, but it does pay you back.
I’m in no way saying your ideas don’t sound cool, just that in the meantime taking the time to get really solid in a design program would probably be a good way to direct your focus.
I have to say that if it were easy and valuable they probably would have done it already. Maybe easy for you
Anyway, the rest of the advice you’ve gotten is correct, this topic needs to be properly placed for GF to even see it. Good luck, new features tend to be few and far between!
Thank you guys for your input! I’m a cnc machinist ( 9 years- mainly run a 12000 rpm mill) and regularly use soft ware to do the things stated above. Hold tolerances to one ten thousandth of an inch, the list goes on. I’ve even ran industrial metal cutting lasers for a year in college as a side job. The ability to pierce and control your approach goes a long way! Inkscape when placing hole locations goes off the edge of the hole not center( don’t want to add half the diameter to a hole everytime) , putting radi on a square is easy but not on an arbitrary shape. I’ve watched YouTube and just not finding what I need. If you could direct me to something like that’d I’d be thrilled!
You might enjoy taking a look at the free (for non-commercial use) Fusion 360, particularly if you’re already familiar with CNC. It’s a 3D rendering program, but we can use it to export the DXF files and convert them to SVG for use in the Glowforge interface…(or they have plugins that export them to SVG directly). It’s a little more powerful than what I usually use (Illustrator) but it makes it easy to get very precise with your designing.
I have fusion 360 and am okayish (new word lol) with it. What I’m talking about is more bare bones, but extremely useful in a number of situations (ex: rapid prototyping) I am fluent with mastercam as well… Any tutorials laser specific for fusion you’d recommend? Thanks for your comment! any advice is much appreciated!
There are a bunch of them in the Tips and Tricks section…depending on how “new” you are. (Some of them are very basic, some more advanced.)
Easiest thing to do is take a look at the recommendations in the Matrix, which just about no one knows about these days…but there are a lot of good tuts listed in there.
There’s no “should” here, but the fact is that illustrator and Inkscape are the de facto standards for creating files for the Glowforge. You’ll have fewer problems and gotchas than with any other software.
