To adjust for kerf or not to

[Hirudin]

Oddly enough, there is (at least) one CAM package that will not only output an SVG, it’s apparently specifically.intended to be used with a Glowforge. Here’s the first post that I know of that talks about it…

Beta day - five (Fitted Gauge Box)

Nice work!!! There are so many jealous people reading this that just cant wait to get their mitts on their laser printer!!! For the few of you with beta units, I made a video with instructions on how to use Fusion 360 and Glowforge (we think since we haven’t been able to test it out yet). If anybody wants to try it out and give me feedback I might be able to throw a Fusion 360 t-shirt or some swag your way. I know its not much…but its something [image]

And here’s a thread that @Clone started to talk about it further…

Using Fusion 360 for CAM and GF post process

Continuing the discussion from Beta day - five: figured I would try to link out to a new topic for people trying this. so I have tried this and its neat and all but I am having some issues / feed back this very well could be a PICNIC (problem in chair not in computer) I have dozens if not hundreds of tabs to lock into the next part. I am having to select each face of each tab (it was something like 163 items to select). it would be nice if I could click the face of the plate and it would f…

I’ve tried it in both Fusion 360 and HSMWorks and it works pretty well. It’s not perfect, but it’s OK. @Jules. I know you’re working on a tutorial to show how to offset sketches in Fusion 360 by a parametric value, maybe I could supplement that by recording a video about how to use the Glowforge post processor in HSMWorks (or maybe even in Fusion 360, though that video has already been made once).

Why do I say it’s just “OK”? Well, the SVG it generates is less a collection of shapes and more a collection of lines. Each line segment is its own entity. The laser cutter that I happen to have doesn’t seem to have a problem cutting with a mishmash of hundreds of individual line segments. This laser, perhaps by virtue of using a printer driver (a form of CAM, to keep the nomenclature consistent with the rest of this thread), seems to automatically join the lines together.

So, what’s the problem? Unlike my printer-CAMed laser cutter, Glowforge has had issues with unjoined mishmashes of lines. Here’s a post from @dan stating this…

@dan

• The SVG lines aren’t connected, which means the laser doesn’t draw them in a smooth, continuous line. Maybe someday, but the current state of affairs is that it’ll do a little line somewhere, head off and do another little line, come back and do the next bit, etc. It’s so precise you don’t see the result at the end, but it’s a bit slower and somewhat maddening to watch.

OK, fine, the lines aren’t joined. No big deal, right? Sorry, that is a big deal. As best as I can tell, joining the lines in Inkscape means selecting two joined lines individually, then selecting the point at which they are joined, and then executing the “join” command. A process that would literally take hours with some designs. Illustrator is a little better, at least you can select all the unjoined lines at once, but it has a strange proclivity of also ADDING a bunch of unwanted lines in the process. Here’s a “before and after” image I created and posted in the above thread to illustrate the mess this creates…
https://community.glowforge.com/uploads/short-url/zUHGpvI63KTRsI0WIPrtFuZUCAN.png
This is better than Inkscape, but not by much. I don’t have Corral Draw (or even know that it’s actually “CorelDraw” ), so I haven’t tried joining the lines created by the Glowforge post processor in that yet.

Rhino will join these lines perfectly. OK, cool, so it must be that I just like complaining, right? Although that might be the case, Rhino has one fatal flaw in this regard: it doesn’t open or save SVGs. At least, the version I have (v4) doesn’t, I can say that for sure. It’s possible it’s been added to the newest version (v5) but my quick internet searches seem to suggest that opening this format is still missing from Rhino’s amazing file-compatibility list.

OK, so can’t I just open the SVG in Inkscape, save it as a DXF (I’m assuming Inkscape will do this), then open the DXF in Rhino, join the lines, save the DXF, then open the DXF in the Glowforge software? I think that will be possible BUT, here’s a somewhat recent post from @dan on that subject…

Solidworks Design Workflow?

We’ll support DXF import, but it’s not done yet. For the moment, the most reliable plan is to convert it to SVG, for example via Inkscape or Illustrator.

SO, currently the workflow would be HSMWorks post processor → SVG → Inkscape → DXF → Rhino → DXF → Inkscape → SVG → Glowforge.

Is that the END OF THE WORLD? No. It’s fine. It’s just a bit of a drag to have to jump through SO MANY HOOPS just to WORK AROUND a deficiency that was a feature promised from the beginning…
https://community.glowforge.com/uploads/short-url/grvYjZyyXs0SuoJqoFLBbOyAhhH.png

Call me crazy, but I’m not the biggest fan of being promised things and then find out that those promises have strings attached (it currently sounds like you have to buy Proofgrade material to have the promise fulfilled).

And yes, I know the workflow can also be Fusion 360 → parametrically offset sketch → DXF → Inkscape → SVG → Glowforge. As I mentioned earlier (post 43) this workflow (while completely possible) is riddled with issues when dealing with parts and assemblies that are more complicated than a few 2D extruded sketches.

My current workflow for my primitive laser is SolidWorks → DXF → Rhino → offset → Trotec thing.