Well, I kinda serendipitous came across this hack on my 'Forge. I had some SVG’s I was downloading and had them open, they show up on a bar at the bottom of my screen. I had my Glowforge app open and had a file already open.
What happened was my mouse dragged one of the SVG’s that were on the bottom of the screen into my open GLOWFORGE app.
I had been be-moaning the fact that you can’t “MERGE” different files onto the open app so you can save wood and cut more than one file at a time.
When I saw the new file open on my screen I will confess, I got scared and deleted it because I didn’t know what was going on. lol I should’ve let it be and see if it worked. I may try again and will update this post.
If you try, don’t come for me if it doesn’t work. lol
You cannot open two files from the Dashboard at the same time, but you have always been able to add another file or files from your computer to an open file on the interface.
You can do it by drag and drop, or you could always just open one file and then click the big + at the top and choose “Upload File” and add a second file that way.
Oh. I never knew it, it was a pleasant surprise to me. I did it with purchased files tho and it worked though I didn’t cut them. I was hesitant to mess something up.
LOL, it’s all good, there is no telling how long it was till I found out that you can copy paste despite there being no menu item for it. (CTR+C, CTR+V)
What I often do is upload one file, add others (using the + button), arrange things so it prints exactly how you want it. Rename the file to whatever you want if you want to save it and come back to it later, with the same arrangement on the material. This works well when you are making multiple prints of the same things.
For example, sometimes I have a designs with a large cutouts in them. Instead of just having a large piece of scrap to use later, if there is something else I want to print at the same time, I upload that design and fit it into that “cutout” part. So let’s say I made a frame and then I made a keychain and earrings with the part of the frame that’s cut out. I hope that makes sense. I’m tired and not sure if I’m explaining very well.
Yeah what @rbtdanforth said, learning inkscape or another vector editor like affinity or illustrator will open up so many new things you can do with your Glowforge. It’s definitely worth the effort.
If you want to give inkscape a try, their official tutorials are a great place to start:
Inkscape is terrific for vectors but not so good with raster (snapshot) images. Gimp on the other hand is great with raster images but weak with vectors so they compliment each other well.
I believe @eflyguy meant purchased files from Glowforge. Files you have on your computer, whether you designed them or purchased them, can be combined.