Laser. Cut. Files. (Part III)

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SVG file in Inkscape

After my last post on the subject, Laser. Cut. Files. (Part II), I figured that I had something that worked… but then something came along that worked better!

Thanks to a comment from old pal Thomas Edwards on the Part II post:

Have you tried Inkscape Save as EPS, then Preview EPS to save PDF? (Inkscape Save as PDF might work as well, but I find Corel Draw gets messed up by fonts unless I start as EPS and then go to PDF)

I decided to give PDF files from Inkscape a try. They didn’t work. CorelDraw gets some crazy error trying to open PDF files I create in Inkscape on Mac OS X… but what did work was a two-step process!

Again, my goal is to do all of my design work on Mac OS X, typically using Inkscape, and then moving my files to the Laser Cutter PC running CorelDraw on Windows (yuk!)

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PDF file in Preview

So for now, my process is the following:

1. Create vector art in Inkscape
2. Save (original) file as an SVG
3. Save (a copy of the file) as a PDF from Inkscape
4. Open the PDF from Inkscape in Preview and Save as a PDF
5. Copy the new PDF file to Laser Cutter PC
6. Open a new document in CorelDraw and import PDF file

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Save as a PDF (again!)

Windows and Linux users, your mileage may vary, and obviously you don’t have Preview.app, but on Mac OS X this process works for me. And as for the note in the comment from Thomas about fonts, I’d be sure to convert any fonts into outlines after I save my SVG file, but before I save my PDF file. (It’s an old print design trick.)