Why does GFUI remove dashed lines and text in my svg's?

[susan1]

Hi, Noob here. I’m trying to create a file to cut leather and the stitch holes. When I uploaded it, the letters (initials) were removed and it changed my dashed lines to straight lines. How do I modify the file at keep the dashed lines as cut lines and have the initials from the file show up?

[evansd2]

Couple things: we need to know what software you have to give you exact advice. Let us know and we can help more directly.

that being said…

[susan1]

Adobe Illustrator CC 2020.

[eflyguy]

The GF UI does not support path styles (which is what dashes are) or text.

You need to convert text to paths, and dashed lines to broken path segments - there is a function to do that in Inkscape, but not sure about AI.

[evansd2]

The thing with dashed lines is that they are generally solid lines with a dashed “paint”, aka a stroke style. So the glowforge says “aha a line” and will just treat it like any old line. The solution is to change the dashes to actual line segments and there you go, AI. I’m not an AI guy so I can’t tell you exactly how to do that, but the gist is that you will take your line, and then apply some command to break all the dashes up into their own little lines. (and even then you will maybe want to expand that stroke (AI term that I have absorbed) to convert the little line segments to outlined shapes so you can cut them out.

As for text:

What the glowforge deals with are shapes. You may have some font installed that the GF cant get access to etc. Depending on what you’re doing with that text, (engraving probably? cutting out?) you need to convert the text to shapes and then apply a stroke with no fill (for cuts) or a fill with no stroke (for engraves).

Alternately, you can export as pdf, and the UI will read your text OK (according to @shop anyway, again, not an AI guy).

You’re going to run into some challenges with text where the letters overlap, this is a really deep topic, and it’s hard to know how far to go at this point. The forum is FULL of threads about this, if you have the time, it’s a good idea to read till you’re blue in the face. It’ll pay off.

[susan1]

Thanks so much. No wonder I couldn’t find any patterns with dashed lines. It’s hard to do I guess.

[eflyguy]

Not really. You just need to find the function/feature that converts them. Lots of AI users here, I’m sure someone will be along shortly to tell you how.

[susan1]

It figures… It sounds like it’ll be easier just to punch the holes manually. As far as the text issue, thank you very much. That’s an easy fix.

[susan1]

Looking forward to it! I’m a Photoshop Pro but Illustrator has very different commands and I’m not wrapping my head around it very quickly. LOL!

[evansd2]

@susan1

It sounds like it’ll be easier just to punch the holes manually.

Depending on how many you have, maybe. It’s usually pretty easy though, at least it is in inkscape. Again, sorry I cant tell you exact steps, AI just isn’t my favored terrain.

[susan1]

No worries, I appreciate your effort. If I don’t hear from some Illustrator folks, I may have to switch over to Inkscape for big projects.

[eflyguy]

There should be no need for that. AI is the industry default for vector design, Inkscape is modeled on it.

If you want to dig around (search, above), there has been discussion on how to put holes along a path, for leather stitching. I am pretty sure it covered the method in AI.

[eflyguy]

Here… our supreme leader even posted on it a while back:

Creating Stitch Holes in Cutting Patterns

I had to do this yesterday and found a great solution for Adobe Illustrator. I’m transcribing this from memory, so please correct me if I get the details wrong. Create a small circle Give it a stroke, but not a fill Select the circle and create a scatter brush from it Set the spacing to something like 400% Apply it to the path Edit the spacing to suit (e.g. to make it start and end with a hole, bump it in 1% increments) Expand appearance You will have both the path you want and a second path t…

[susan1]

Very Cool. I’ll see if I can figure that out and make it work.T hanks!

[ekla]

AI: Select path, object/path/outline stroke.

Note: this will turn your dashes into filled shapes, meaning little rectangle or circles depending on your dash settings.

To confirm it worked hit ctrl/cmd+y to switch to outline view. If you still see little boxes or circles it’s good, if you see a continuous line do it again. (sometimes you need to run twice if it’s a complex dash with effects)

Text: as mentioned by @evansd2 you need to outline the text (convert to shapes) before sending to GF. Cmd/ctrl+shift+o. Do this on a copy of your text object as it won’t be editable text anymore after. If any letters overlap they’ll need to be merged before sending to GF to avoid weirdness. Even if they look connected they’ll be separate objects grouped together unless you Boolean or shape merge them.

[susan1]

Great! I’ll Give it a shot. Thanks so much!

[susan1]

You Rock Elka!! It worked like a charm. Thank you ever so much!!

[ekla]

Glad you’re up and running!