Just wanted to say that your reply was very concise and polite…which is always welcome and appreciated. The person that asked the question is, like me, in a minority on this site…new to design and perhaps also laser technology. There are so many highly skilled people on here that it can get a bit intimidating. I read every single post that is made here in order to learn as much as possible. One of my very first posts on here was replied to in a quite rude and short manner, so your willingness to answer even the most basic of questions is admirable. Thank you.
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@darkdesign is correct… We’ll have to wait and see what software is supported but at the very least there will be free and paid solutions to achieve what ever you’ll want to do using your GF… @ljred & @Xabbess “There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question” -Carl Sagan
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I try to steer clear of the questions I don’t have the answers for or that have been asked 10 times before.
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Thank you so much for your reply darkdesign and itsmeblake. I appreciate your kindness. I will check out Inkscape and Gimp to try and get a feel for 3d design. As I said before, I am new to design and I’ve never used a laser 3d printer before. I am excited to start playing around with designs. I look forward to seeing other people’s designs as well. I am always looking to learn new things and appreciate any and all help I receive!
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I use Inkscape, Sketchup (for 3D modeling) and GIMP. The YouTube tutorials break down the techniques very well for all of them.
Here is a great intro article with other helpful links to chase down.
http://makezine.com/2013/10/23/tutorial-laser-cutting-techniques-and-projects/
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I want to chime in and thank you all for great answers to great questions. AI and PS are not obvious acronyms nor easy to google. And whoever was short with @Xabbess should be flagged - if you see people being impolite, just hit the little flag icon under the offending post (you might have to be a user who’s been around for a while to see it, I’m not certain) to let me know.
There are too many awesome, brilliant people here for a few grumps to poison the water.
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Thank you very much! You are absolutely right on all counts.
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I think early software release is a good idea because it will let us validate our tool chains, e.g. to ensure that Inkscape is emitting in a form that has the correct dimensions as understood by the software. For this to work we will also need a Glowforge simulator to run the SW on which would emit a picture of the resulting cuts. It does not allow for exercising the scanner or the camera registration, but it does let us put together some validated HOWTOs on our various tool chains.
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It would probably be a good idea to for GF to select a few “knowledgeable” users and do a private beta with them, presumably folks that are good with the design software produced by others so that the testers and GF can focus on any anomalies or confusing workflows with the GF software with emphasis on getting those designs into the GF software and telling GF what to do with them.
It’s all too easy for software programmers to get tunnel vision for their product and not realize the issues that the typical user will have.
truer words
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I was just wondering today about this. Downloaded SketchUp and already had Inkscape. So that’s done.
I couldn’t find an answer to the OP’s question. Can we try the software now?
Best answer I have is that @jkopel is beta testing at the moment. So I doubt it is ready for anyone to toy around with it. So add a few more months till it is in a very advanced beta, and by then we are looking at shipping anyways. Maybe we will end up with a few weeks before launch if we are luck, but right now, no we can’t.
There is a new screen shot up somewhere though.
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Can we please try the (beta) software now? My understanding was that hardware production was the issue causing the delay, not software.
The software timeline should have it running by June (with updates over time, of course.) Thanks!
Software will be that eternal “not done, but available” kind of thing that pervades nowadays. Since it is cloud hosted and always update ready.
So, while the software is certainly existing and functional (they use it in demonstration events, and for the Beta)… what they have now will be barely representative of what they will have in December.
Of course! And that’s fine. As long as we can try it along the way.
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Since the software is highly dependent on the cameras in the Glowforge for the main part of its UI, I am pretty sure that about all it can do without a Glowforge connected is, well, walk you through connecting your Glowforge. Since they have Glowforges in the office with the Developers, there is really no incentive for Glowforge (the company) to build an emulation mode into the software.
One of their most basic tenets is that getting the laser to do what we want it to do has to be way easy to figure out, and based on what we have seen so far, that looks like its coming along nicely, so we would likely not gain much from playing with it ahead of time anyways.
Also, the Glowforge team itself is getting larger all the time, and actually already includes people with a significant variety of backgrounds and core competencies. As such, the team itself is becoming a fairly good analog for the much larger end user community. They should therefore be very capable of getting the software fully functional and intuitive for a wide variety of users.
Also, even if they miss something that would be a boon for a sizable subset of us purchasers, the fact that it is cloud based means they can and will tune stuff like that in short order after they are delivering our machines. And Dan has already been very keen on filling up a hopper with feature requests posited by the forum members, so once the pressure of delivering the advertised software functionality (and those thousands of machines) is off his team, I have no doubt that they will be very receptive to those existing hopper requests and any new feature requests that would be useful to a reasonably wide cross-section of the user base going forward.
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I’m not sure that’s true. Even if the ultimate test is the cutting, it would be really useful to have a visualization of what’s going to be cut. And cheaper and faster, even for people who have glowforges. (I know that with my 3D printer a look at the layer-by-layer paths of filament to be squirted out has often been helpful, and sometimes a really important safety net.)
and how much fun would it be to print random stuff to show our support for the Glowforge team!
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With a 3D printer there are layers to work with. So there are things which the machine does that you simply do not see in the model.
With a laser… you are pretty much working with WYSIWYG. So the best representation of what your outcome will be is the file you provide.
The one case this isn’t true is with greyscale engrave, or a bitmap to engrave auto-convert. But I cannot say how easily you could toss together something which presents you a realistic sample of what the final cut may look like. It is either something VERY trivial (a snapchat filter), or something insanely complex (material characterization and interpolation).
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