You can use color to differentiate between items that you want to treat differently, and the GF will make a few assumptions based on entity type in your design, but colors are not mapped to explicit operations.
It won’t interpret any as a score. Those have to be switched.
Any no-fill, stroke only vector will be interpreted as a cut. If you make them all Tickle Me Pink, they’ll be interpreted as being in the same cut operation. If you change one to Robin’s Egg Blue, you’ll have 2 separate cut operations.
Any no-stroke, filled object will be interpreted as an engrave. If you make them all with a Mango Tango fill, they’ll be interpreted as the same engrave operation. If you change one of them to a Razzmatazz fill, you’ll have two separate engrave jobs.
Echoing what others are saying - your GF doesn’t care what the colors are. The colors separate operations so you can change the order if you’d like. For example, if you are making a coaster, it’s a great idea to engrave the inside and save cutting the coaster out of the board for last, because it may move slightly when the cut finishes.
As I did when I got my machine, you’ll need to learn the difference between fill and strokes. Your GF interprets “fill” as an “engrave” operation, and “stroke” as a cut operation. Cuts may be changed to scores in the GFUI just before you begin the print.
I’d recommend this video in particular as a good starting point to comprehend the differences between fills and strokes and how to manipulate them in your chosen software to get the results you are looking for.
Keep at it! It came to me all at once after a week or so of drawing simple objects and testing how they worked in the GF. The initial understanding didn’t take long, but when you really “get it,” you’ll know.
Thanks for all the input - I must have had a moment remembering something that didn’t exist.
I understand all the stuff about automated cut order and the colour ordering in general.
Specifically my reason for asking is that I’m trying to find a way of embedding some level of cut information in the SVG files.
I know this is not part of the SVG spec, nor part of the GF spec. Yes, I know I can put some text in as well.
For me I am rapidly building a library of components and completed items. To have the actual cut order and at least the cut/engrave/score indicator would be ever so useful. Like an extended SVG…
As it is I am standardising on a colour set, so I know the first two colours are score, the next engrave, the fourth is inner cuts, the fifth is outer cuts. It simplifies a lot of thinking time and remembering.
I see where you’re headed and that makes sense. Something I have found useful is to type right into the SVG things I want to remember for the next time I cut a thing. Such as “Cut the red outline first, then flip end to end and engrave just the purple circles to make the magnet recesses.” The beauty of it is the GF doesn’t do text, so it’s meaningful to me, and handy where I need it, but never shows up in the imported design.
Just got my Glowforge. In doing online research, there are definitely laser cutters out there that can be programmed to interpret a color with a specific material and cut settings. This would be a fantastic update for Glowforge!