Stitch lines

[seaglekeenan]

When I upload my line drawing from Adobe Illustrator, it shows up in Glowforge as stitch lines. Then I can not turn it into sewing holes because the stitch lines are too complicated. Any tips?

[seaglekeenan]

Embroidered circle.pdf (350.5 KB)

[deirdrebeth]

I’m not an Illustrator user, but luckily you’re not the first to ask this question!

How to turn a dashed line into separate lines for scoring or cutting in Illustrator

Here are the steps. Note: this will work with any line and any shape. If you are using a shape, make sure to set it to no fill. Draw your line. Open the Stroke Palette and click on Dashed Line. You can change the size of the dash and gap here. Change the size of the stroke to .0001 pt Under the Object Menu choose Expand and make sure only Stroke is checked and hit enter Change the size and color of the stroke to whatever you want. Import into your Laser Software and set to score or cut. That…

[bwente]

Leather travel wallet

I started making some patterns using Illustrator. What size are you making the holes? I used a 3pt thick dashed line (set to a 1pt dash, 6pt gap) and then converting the stroke to outline. [image]

[deirdrebeth]

These are both the same answer, but described differently. Hopefully one of them will grok for you!

[seaglekeenan]

Thanks for your response! Are you choosing the dashed line in Illustrator or on the Glowforge website? I’ve only been doing it with Glowforge, and find it a bit constraining for what I want to do. I am very new to both programs, and Glowforge is obviously very simple compared to Illustrator, so my learning curve is a lot bigger with AI operations. I appreciate you sharing your cut sizes. I have yet to even cut an experimental piece because I ran into this hiccup. Embroidering on wood, so no flexibility. We’ll see how it goes!

[seaglekeenan]

Thank you so much for forwarding this!

[deirdrebeth]

The Glowforge UI is only designed for very basic design stuff.
Adding words.
Making stamps of pre-designed art.
Resizing.
While it’s possible to do more advanced stuff, it’s definitely not its strong suit. Use Adobe (I use Inkscape) for actual designing, and the GFUI for tweaks!

[bwente]

I did my leather wallet in Illustrator. I think the process would be the same for any drawing program. You will have to play around with the spacing of the “round dashes” to get it just right. Good luck.

I don’t have access to Illustrator anymore, so now I use Cuttle for my laser design work. The last piece I did with stitch holes was a wooden embroiderary.

[seaglekeenan]

Interesting. Thanks so much for your input. Such a sweet design!