See images attached. The graphic seems to be perfect in Coreldraw, it’s all welded into one vector except for the green centering cross. When it arrives in the GF preview, it’s missing a ton of lines. Thoughts?
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That’s a pretty complex image for a vector, lots of anchor points/nodes. GFUI sometimes has trouble with too many. It may or may not process all the shape. If your goal is to engrave, you’ll have more predictable results rasterizing the artwork (go 300dpi or so).
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Well, I want to raster and then score, which becomes difficult if not using the same exact file to do both operations.
I was unaware Glowforge had limits on how complex a vector could be!? Is this… is this a brick wall in the machine?
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It could just be that the lines didn’t show in preview. Did you try running it on scrap material to see?
Complexity becomes an issue when there are bazillions of excess nodes, like you get when tracing images. Legitimately complex designs haven’t been an issue for me.
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I don’t see anything that would be an obvious score target. Just rasterize the entire thing and engrave the entire thing.
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I’m engraving/scoring in leather, and I have done a BUNCH of testing. Engraving first and then scoring turns out the best results for the leather I need to use.
Trust me, it’s worth it to score this.
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Score the outline, not the interior lines.
Create just an outline, and make it a different stroke color. Set that to Score. Rasterize the rest and try to Engrave it straight up that way. (Still a lot of little lines in there, I can just about guarantee that will engrave like a solid filled octopus shape. It’s going to look better if you remove most of those little lines and just “hint” at the shading.)
So, I thought about doing it that way for this graphic too (attached below) but I did one try with doing a score over every line and it improved the end result drastically. The thick areas need to be engraved for fill- but only the score really makes the thin linework pop.
This sounds like all there might be are workarounds that don’t get me where I want to be… 
Is there a brick wall to vector complexity that just… nobody talks about?
I need to engrave this octopus, then score it. That’s what I need to do, to get the best outcome (after doing extensive testing, I have no reservations stating that unequivocally.)
The bird picture has more white space between the lines. 
You can try the octopus if you want, it might work. I’m just not sure it’s going to turn out the way you want it to. Keep an eye on it.
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Here in a couple of hours I’ll toss a sheet of cardboard on and see if it’s just choking on the preview but still engraves the whole thing. Thanks for the troubleshooting suggestion.
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Except I apparently cannot try the octopus? It arbitrarily discards a bunch of the graphic… 
Keep an eye on it if you do, and be ready to stop the print if it catches fire.
This has nothing to do with limitations on the machine…IMO that’s not a good design to try to Score. Ruth is right, it might just not be displaying all the lines, and it might try to print the whole thing.
(But I might be wrong, so give it a whirl if you want. Just watch it closely.)
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I mean, we have talked about it quite a bit, plus it has gotten better a few times over the years. Start here :
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Can you post the file? Either the SVG you loaded into the GF or the CDR you created in Corel?
We can look to see if th file truly is overly complex or if you’ve got some other issues like overlapping lines, inappropriate fills, etc.
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I’d love to see an example of your engraving-then-scoring technique. It sounds very interesting.
In my experience working with complex designs, the GF processing seems to fall down somewhere around 35,000-38,000 nodes.
That would be the total for all design elements. i.e. if you import/upload a graphic with 30,000, you can’t then import another 10,000.
Without seeing your file, but doing a simple conversion from the bitmap you posted, I’d guess your best approach would be to etch a raster, and trace (and then score) the outline. Scoring outlines certainly does make a design “pop” - just like comics and hand-drawn style animation.
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Interesting that nobody’s mentioned that this looks a lot like there are broken paths.
I suspect your svg is full of them, and that manual repair would take ages.
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I think that’s what @jamesdhatch was pointing too - it may not just be the quantity of nodes, but the quality of the overall file.
I wasn’t able to tinker with it again yet (family in town so time to ‘Forge is tight)
Once I can I’ll report back
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HI @JimSocks. I’m sorry to see that you’ve been running into some trouble printing and engraving your designs. I saw other users mentioned the complexity of the Octopus and potential for a higher number of nodes creating issues.
Also, since it sounds you’re trying to print it on some leather, that can be harder to get the score and engrave. Since it’s a material that can shrink or warp as heat is applied from the laser, it can become harder to achieve the desired results.
I saw that you were currently working through fellow Community members offered, and will get to those soon. I’ll go ahead and leave this thread open to help, and will look forward to your next post. Thank you.