Computers for designing

Inkscape and Illustrator and RDWorks should be on every computer at the space :smiley:

They def need to be on the Laser computers. There is a lot of testing: Of settings, scale… many things. Then adjustments need to be made in the design software.

It’s a hard line to call adjustments vs design.

Best approach: If you feel someone is doing design and tying up the computer and therefore the laser, ask them. Just talk to the person. I do it all the time. If they are working on design, I give them better options of where to do it. If they are not tying up the laser, then it is a non-issue.

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I indeed. Had a job a few weeks ago I thought would be like 20 mins. SHOULD have been based on previous cuttings but like three passes and still no cut through.

Well, 60 hours and a 10 hour makerthon had zapped my brain and I had forgotten to change the settings for all colors, but did not realize so I was furiously thumbing the manual. So glad the “fresh eyes” caught it instead of getting upset at me. I was off soon after.

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These wonderful encounters are common at the Lasers. Community builds there.

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CloudConvert ( https://cloudconvert.com ) does an excellent job of converting .svg files to .dxf which neatly import into RDWorks. It is FREE but limits you to a certain number of “converts” per day. You can get a subscription which is really cheap that will allow more “coverts”. AI is EXPENSIVE!!

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Inkscape, which is free, natively understands SVG and can export DXF. On top of that it doesn’t require Internet access for the task. If you want to try inkscape you might need to FlattenBezier to prevent extra artifacts in RDworks or PlasmaCam.

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