My Latin teacher said, don’t ask why, just ask how and do it. Sage advice for me. I myself like to understand the why behind an instruction or command. The forum is grappling with the difficulty of providing instruction without getting lost in all the different ways the design programs accomplish something, the variety of names for design operations and features among the programs, and how the the GFUI does something. In the end the only advice we can give to folks is spend time learning about designing for the Glowforge. The concepts aren’t difficult (in the sense that understanding quantum tunneling is difficult*) but there are lots of them and it can get complex.
@Jules’s tutorial here would be one of the best places to start in getting the knowledge needed to evaluate your own design. If folks do not understand all this basic terminology, it is very difficult to assist because there is no common vocabulary to talk about design features.
*and before someone launches into a reply that quantum tunneling isn’t all the difficult and here’s how to understand it, recall our purpose here. And I’m as guilty as anyone in complicating and obfuscating issues.