bjoebirk Posted October 29, 2019 Share Posted October 29, 2019 I'm using Illustrator to cut things with my Glowforge laser, and now trying to use Affinity designer. When I use Illustrator the results are stable. When I use Affinity the results are not correct and do not come out as expected. All files are without fill. Today I wanted to cut a square of 18 mm x 18 mm. If I made a file with one 18 mm x 18 mm square with a symbol inside and exported it to SVG, it came out as "around" 43 mm x 43 mm most of the time in SVG and . When I just use a square of 18 x 18 mm, it opens with 18,1 to 18,3 mm size, and not always square, one side can be 18,1 and the other 18,274 aso. I have also tested a square 18 mm x 65 mm, made in Affinity. When I open the SVG from affinity designer in Illustrator, the size is 43,181 mm x 155,934 mm, and line with has changed from 0,1 mm to 1,757 mm. Opened in Affinity the same SVG file now the size is 75 mm x 270,8 mm, and the line has changed to 4.2 pts, when it started as 0,1 mm, since I use mm as document units. I have tested different files to PDF and SVG, and they all change in size. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Sean P Posted October 30, 2019 Staff Share Posted October 30, 2019 Hi bjoebirk, Unfortunately we don't have access to a Glowforge Laser Cutter or the web-based software to import the SVGs to try this however we've had similar things reported before and I believe it is primarily caused by our exporter not exporting to Physical Units such as mm. Instead it will use pixels which isn't great when it comes to wanting to use lasers. In the meantime I believe the following may work for you it allowed me to import documents correctly into Inkscape with the correct scaling, which has previously been an issue. Use pixels in your Affinity document (but treat them as mm). For example if you want to cut an 18mm square on an A4 sheet then use a document size of 297x210px with an shape size of 18px. When exporting click 'More' and ensure that 'Flatten Transforms' and 'Set Viewbox' is ticked. You may also find you will want to disable 'Use relative co-ordinates'. Once you've exported the SVG open it up in a text editor and look for the <svg width="100%" height="100%".. area. Change these two values to the height and width of your document (should be the same as the viewbox) and ensure you add mm to them. So it should read as <svg width="210mm" height="297mm" This alone should force Glowforge hopefully to import them as mm, and all your other values be sized to this and should match up. This was what I found with Inkscape, if that doesn't work you may need to have a quick look through your SVG and remove any instances of 'px' for sizes. I've attached three documents. The first is the AFDesign document I was using, the second is the SVG straight from Designer with the following settings, and the third is just making that change to the height and width field above. I hope this workaround helps you use Affinity Designer with your Laser Cutter! ExportStraightFromDesigner.svg ExportStraightFromDesigner_PageSizeFixed.svg DesignerTestDocument.afdesign Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Sean P Posted October 30, 2019 Staff Share Posted October 30, 2019 Alternatively I found Inkscape imports our SVG at the correct size if the document is 96dpi. I would be interested to see if the SVG below works for you. If so then simply work in your desired units at 96dpi. Doc_MM_96dpi.svg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bjoebirk Posted November 3, 2019 Author Share Posted November 3, 2019 I will test setting to 96 dpi. or just continue use illustrator till you have fixed it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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