Trotec software doesn't recognize cut line

I’m trying to cut something on the laser cutter but for some reason the cut time of the job is always 0 , I tried illustrator and inkscape with different profiles and files, no success,did anyone experienced any problems?

Yes, I’ve had this in inkscape, and also when opening an inkscape SVG in illustrator. I think files created in illustrator, or files imported into illustrator from other software packages should be OK.
As usual make sure you have your colours right, line thickness correct and opacity at 100%.

We fixed it.

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I’ve also found this to be rather temperamental. If anyone’s found a good way to fix it, or at least a few things to try, please put them here so we can start a list!

I had the same issue with a file I created and cut the day before, my resolution was to change colour from blue to red, ungroup all objects this allowed me to adjust all lines to 0.001in and cut via illustrator better than the previous day.

I am going to create a troubleshooting log, something we discussed a couple of years ago but it never got off the ground. If you come across any job control issues that you manage to resolve drop me a message and I will try to start troubleshooting a workbook for people to use when they get stuck.

Cheers

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I 'm still not convinced that is Inkscape’s fault.

The version installed is the same I did installed 3 months ago, I think something changed in the Trotec software settings…,

It is, in my opinion, important that we can still use inkscape and/or opensource software.

Perhaps nuke the disk and reinstall? is it been done recenly , @lasertechs ?

Let’s not “nuke” anything… there has never been an issue I have not managed to resolve after some investigation… remember trotec has paid developers working to insure their software is robust and thats not something I can gaurentee from Inkscape… what’s the urgency on this project? Happy to help when available.(Lasertechs also have lives… :wink:)

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One of the other issues we’ve mentioned before is Inkscape SVGs opened in Adobe can leave a white background behind each layer that the Trotec takes as a Bitmap not a vector.
If in Adobe you go to layers and ungroup, delete all the white backgrounds + do what @StudioNelle was talking about with the colours and lines, you can get the drawings to migrate and cut successfully. if not it treats everything as a Bitmap / engraving

Courty

Is the suggested workaround to open files with Illustrator at the moment?

If we can identify the issues we can reach out to both Inkscape and Trotec on this

IIRC Illustrator doesn’t handle SVG natively? So there may well be import issues when opening them, but the extra layers??? What a PITA

Every other Maker/Hackspace uses Inkscape…but none of them have a Trotec… however the knowledge is deep out there!

the fix yesterday took me 2minutes and all it took was copying and pasting from inkscape to illustrator and checking if the size is still the same - which was off by 1mm - and then scaling back. Which is all one has to do as far as I’ve experienced.

If there’s always Illustrator where we can open it we are cool.

I just asked if we recently reinstalled Windows, last time I heard about it someone was saying that was due.

And yes, clearly paid developers are way better then people who work on opensource project like Inkscape or Linux :stuck_out_tongue:

Lasertechs have lives and deserve their time, I didn’t force anyone to answer.

I agree with you , can be easily fixable.

I was just trying to investigate why this is happening, purely from a engineering point of view

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Sure. Personaly I’d also love to see Inkscape working with JobControl directly.

I answer because I like to help, was just explaining it may not be right away… do you have a file that I can investigate?

Thank you for your help, this is the file if someone is interested.

cut

Seems that the only answer found was to roll back Inkscape to an older version – unfortunately this wouldn’t open the .dxf files I was working on…leading to a very boring tool path of: open and tweak on my laptop > USB drive > open in Illustrator > fix all the things Illustrator broke > cut

There’s a newer version of Inkscape now, so probably worth an install to see if it works. Like many people I find Illustrator a PITA (and don’t want to put the time in learning an app I’ll never buy)

I’ve had this occasional problem for years with inkscape and trotec, and it has cropped up again today. Usually it is the opacity of the cut line isn’t 100%, or the blur isn’t 0%, but every once in a while it still doesn’t work. It happened again today and I was search for solutions when I came across this thread. I found the problem: The opacity of some text (NOT the cut line) was not at 100%, it was at 97% (by accident). When I made it 100%, trotec recognized the cut line. I hope that helps and I hope this works for me in the future!

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For what it’s worth, when exporting from Affinity Designer I also often see scaling issues with SVG (last time the design imported as 66% of the size), but using EPS instead seems to work much better (as well as making sure nothing is being rasterised on export). Not sure if Inkscape has the same option.

Hi. The stroke and fill colours have to be an exact match for the Trotec colours. If the opacity is not 100%, Trotec considers that to be a different colour!

In Ruby, line thickness only matters if you are going to engrave the line.
So, for a cut line, the thickness can be zero, provided the invisible line has an approved colour :slight_smile: