I’m willing to ask Glowforge to make their software better than what people with two week’s experience will settle for.
re: my unwillingness to imput fake dimensions -
Kerf adjustment is STANDARD practice in CAM software. If people who have no experience with CAM software are confused by the word “kerf” for a couple minutes, so be it. Yeah, it’s a funny word, but the concept is as simple as can be. It’s basically “coloring inside the lines”, but with a laser instead of a crayon. I believe people are capable of learning. To those who don’t want to adjust for kerf, allow me to introduce you to the number “0”.
re: my unwillingness to watch the laser bounce around - It’s inefficient. Cutting line segments by randomly bouncing around the bed is, put simply, wrong. As I said, it’s not the end of the world, but I will not willfully allow it to happen, which leads to…
re: my unwillingness to spend hours tediously fixing disjoined files - I have Rhino, it joins lines perfectly, instantly, and doesn’t do anything stupid while doing it. I realize not everyone has Rhino, but (almost) everyone here has a Glowforge coming to them. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask Glowforge to save their customers hours by programming their cloud-based software to join lines intelligently.
re: my unwillingness to clutter my files with kludge-geometry - This isn’t entirely true, as this is basically what I do now. I draw something in CAD (whether it be in Rhino, SolidWorks, Fusion 360) or I obtain a drawing created by someone else, THEN I load the file into Rhino and basically use it as if Rhino is the CAM software for my Trotec. It’s not efficient and I wish it was different.
If I thought Trotec was interested in modenizing their software to get out of the late '90s, I’d probably be complaining on their forum (if they even have one). But I don’t think Trotec desires input from their customers, I think Glowforge does. Please tell me if I’m wrong about Glowforge.
So, in truth, I am willing to do it, but I won’t forget that doing it this way is… wrong. I’ve already enumerated why adjusting for kerf within your main design file is riddled with problems in a post above. Yes, it DOES work. It CAN be done that way. If you’re willing to live with the inherent problems that creates, there’s nothing stopping anyome from doing it that way. It goes without saying, but I’ll say it a second time anyway, having manual kerf adjustment in the Glowforge software won’t stop anyone either, as long as they remember the number “0” exists.