I searched, but didn’t find anything on this:
I hear a lot of requests for being able to save gf parameters such as material, speed, power, etc in the SVG file. Since the SVG file format is text and supports block comments, saving that info in the file is trivial. What do you think of the idea of a 3rd party utility that would make it easy to insert and read glowforge parameters stored in an SVG file? Would that be useful?
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appears trivial. I’m with you, but it’s definitely an assumption.
I personally love the idea of making it read text objects, interpret the colors of the text, and then apply that setting to anything that is in the same stroke/fill color as the text in question.
The tricky part about a third party application is that ti’ll be obsolete if/when GF finally gets around to doing this, but that’s a big if, and an unknown when. I think back to the settings-saving bookmarklet that someone whipped up, it was immediately superseded by GF when they released the settings saving feature in the UI.
So, if you’re down with taking that risk, I think there would be a market for what you’re talking about.
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It’s similar to the concept of the flavor of G-code that 3D printers use. CNC G-code describes the motions the machine will perform to execute a job, but the 3D printer dialect embeds stuff like the temperature to which the extruded material should be heated, and how fast it should be pushed in relation to things like the installed nozzle size. This all gets determined ahead of time as the job is “sliced”, and all things being literally equal, should be repeatable. It’s all very much keyed to my machine, the material I’m using, and even some personal preferences at the moment I generate that file. Change the vendor for materials (or even end up a with a different batch from the same vendor), and the next seemingly identical job can fail. On my unenclosed printer in my unheated garage, I can guarantee the same job will perform differently in January than in August.
Is this assuming the feature would be primarily for an individual to store ideal settings for a tested project that’s expected to be repeated? If you’re talking about sharing configuration along with the design for others, it’s an interesting idea but seems like limited utility, considering the universe of materials used at run time and even variations between machines. This isn’t meant to discourage the development, just some questions that come to mind.
Yes, I agree with you both. I’m not thinking of this as a commercial venture, just a simple utility in the public domain. If/when Glowforge integrates this into the GFUI it would be obsolete.
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They actually already do that. When you use a design from the online catalog, it comes with the steps and operations pre-set, via some extra info in the SVG XML. In the early days, some more adventurous forum members tried to reverse engineer it to use in their own files. Unfortunately, discussing how to get at this info is potentially a TOS violation, so I’m going to leave it at that.
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Interesting. Makes sense that they would do it that way. I wasn’t aware that poking around in the innards could get me in trouble with the TOS, so that’s good to know too! I’ll probably just hack something together for my own use & leave it at that.
I think it’s ok to poke, you just can’t tell other people how to poke. 
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Nothing wrong with poking around. There’s just a forbidden subject that is very closely related to this subject.
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Yes. Something as simple as distinguishing a score from a cut would be very advantageous. Not sure if it is worth Glowforge holding onto that magic incantation. It seems that releasing that hound would be a great boon to the masses. However, information is the most important commodity in this world and while they have the secret knowledge, it is their secret sauce. It’s ok. A couple seconds of design work. At least we can save it when it’s done.
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The big forbidden topic is specifically about downloading glowforge’s files, something they don’t want anyone doing. You’re fine so far.
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