Introduction: 3 Ways to Fix Missing Vectors in RetinaEngrave
The Dallas Makerspace has a Full Spectrum laser cutter for members to use, and most of us use Inkscape to design our parts. Sometimes its driver, RetinaEngrave, doesn't recognize all of the vector lines in your drawing. Here are three ways to fix the problem.
Step 1: Move Away From the Edge
RetinaEngrave won’t "print" parts that are outside the edge of your page, but it also won’t print items that are too close to the edge. Try moving your graphics at least one inch away from the edges. You can move things on and off the page to print multiple parts.
Step 2: Set Your Stroke Opacity to 100%
RetinaEngrave ignores objects whose stroke opacity is at less than 100%. Select all of your objects, pull up the Stroke Paint panel, and set this slider to 100%. You may need to set the slider to a lower number, then move it back up to max.
Step 3: Combine Paths of the Same Color
If your design contains many objects, RetinaEngrave may not see all of them. This commonly happens with text. Select several or all of the objects that have the same stroke color and Combine Paths. (You can undo this later with the Break Apart function.)
4 Comments
10 months ago
This is 100% Retina's error as I have this exact same problem printing from Adobe Illustrator to my Gen 5. All my prior saved RE files from the Retina program itself just recently started having missing vectors despite loading perfectly fine for the past 7 years. Now when I go to make new files from Illustrator, thinking my old RE files are just out of date, it doesn't see all the vectors. It's never done this before. Step 3 saved me so much you have no idea.
Though it MAJORLY sucks that all my old retina files are now bad and I have to manually go back and re-save everything and overwrite them since none of them load with all the vectors anymore.
9 years ago on Introduction
I was chewing my face and pulling my hair out.
I've been using Corel X4 - X6 with my Full Spectrum Laser (Gen 5) and have not experienced any issues with the past several versions of RetinaEngrave.
I recently used Inkscape (for the very first time) with RE 4.404 and had this occur. Step 3 resolved it for me.
Thank you. More than you might imagine.
10 years ago on Introduction
I just want to say that this article helped me out again since it's been a while since I had problems, but I was having them tonight, and again, step 3 is what saved the day. :)
10 years ago on Introduction
To be fair, it doesn't look like this is a problem with retina engrave's printer driver. It looks like it's an inkscape issue. If you search for "inkscape missing vectors when printing," there are other cases where the same issue is happening for other output methods.
BUT, for me, step 3 is the missing information that I needed. Thank you very much! I didn't even need to expand and move away from the edge of the document anymore, yay!