It seems K40 does not like Affinity Designer2
I am currently using ADOBE Illustrator (MAC) - exporting to a Windows machine running scorchworks. This Works fine.
I want to move to Affilinity designer2 - problem is, scorchworks does not display red lines - (redlines are required. to work the CO2 machines). In Affinity, I have cgraphics are in pure red RGB - thats correct I think
My question is this :
What might might the problem?
Any advice is much apprecated.
John Harris
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Please upload a sample SVG file that demonstrates the problem.
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Hi,
Here are the images and an the file which illustrates the problem.
Affinity does not seem to work with K40 Whisperer.
I appreciate your attention.
With thanks - John
Here are
Caveat: I know very little about either Affinity or Whisperer, but ā¦
When I open your SVG as a text file (svg is a text format) I see:
<circle cx="142.776" cy="127.758" r="106.651" style="fill:none;stroke:#f20d0d;stroke-width:1px;"/>
Your original posting implies you need this line to be RED (#FF0000) for it to appear as a cut line in whisperer.
You can try to edit your svg file (with vi/nano or whatever) and change the stroke colour to #ff0000 on that line. If that works I guess you need to look to affinity to determine why the line colour is not set properly.
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You can see the line color is set to āf20d0dā in the screen shot. Just change that to āFF0000ā for red (vector cut) or ā00FF00ā for blue (vector engrave).
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Mcdanlj, easytarget and Scorch,
I really appreciate your assistance with this issue. We have solved the problem (fantastic). Using colour FF0000 was the solution.
Thank you : )
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In the RGB(red green blue) color scheme of FF0000 what you have is 256 levels of red, 00 levels of green and 00 levels of blue. The format, rrggbb is being displayed in the computer format called Hexadecimal format which is another way to display binary data. Just know that FF0000 is 100% red.
00FF00 is 100% green and 0000FF is 100% blue.
A bright mixture of red and blue gives a bright purple using FF00FF.
I need to air my frustrations - but I know that the world will go on regardless 
Yesterday I had a power outage - today Affinity will not export to K40 whisperer. Color is set to FF0000 -as before, but now it just doesnāt work with K40 whisperer - I am disappointed, because I really would like to use Affinity Designer.
If Affinity and Scorchworks could at least provide a clear set of instructions for exporting to K40 whisperer that would be great. It seems Scorchworks seems to be only interested in supporting Inkscape (which canāt be downloaded on my Mac anyway).
In the meantime, Iāll stay with Adobe Illustrator - at this stage Affinity just canāt cut the mustard.
John
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Hi John,
That all soundsā¦ horribleā¦ and frustrating. You have my sympathy.
I guess you could go to the affinity support forums (here) and basically ask āHow do I force all lines in my document to a specific colour?ā or similar if you wanted to keep using it.
But illustrator is also a good tool. Itās certainly popularā¦
I hesitate to recommend Inkscape to casual users, since it has a pretty steep learning curve and some UI krankiness that can be hard to wrap ones head around. But it is generally available for macs.
Finally, and I guess this is aimed at the Whisperer devs, not you. In Laserweb we index all the colours used in an input file. You can then create a job that applies to just one colour by selecting from a dropdown of all the colours used in the document. Maybe this is something you could enhance in Whisperer.
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Just being clear here: Scorchworks is a person (@Scorch) not a company. He did a lot of work to learn how to drive the K40 without the horrible software that shipped with it, and wrote K40 Whisperer, which is free, open source software. Not everyone knows this. In fact, for years there have been people who have taken advantage of that and sold copies of K40 Whisperer without disclosing that it is open source, and without sharing their gains with him. So if you have been misled into thinking that you paid for commercially-supported software by someone who sold you a copy of K40 Whisperer, the fault is the person who sold it to you without disclosing the free, open source nature of K40 Whisperer.
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As before, it REALLY helps when people upload the file they are having problems with. K40 Whisperer works with SVG files and DXF files and if Affinity software will no longer export files of these types then as was mentioned, the Affinity software forums might be better for figuring that exort option out.
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Ah, I didnāt realise that either (and Iāve hung around here for long enough to have learned, so my bad) thank you for the clarification!
@Scorch : I applaud you for Whisperer! and Iāll be more cautious with the suggesting random enhancements in the future 
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Suggesting enhancements is definitly not a problem. Many features have been added based on the desires of users. The other thing to remember is that MeerK40t works with the same controller boards so there are other options if you donāt like something about K40 Whisperer.
Side Note: If red is applied as a fill color in Affinity (or any other program) it will not be recognized as a vector feature. Fill colors are always handled with raster engraving.
Scorch
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Is there are scorchworks company or just a bloke called āScorchā? - Itās a bit confusing.
Probably not a company, having a ā.comā domain does not mean you are incorporated/etc. Itās just a domain name. Did you see his homepage? Heās done lots of cool stuff besides K40 Whisperer.
https://www.scorchworks.com/
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Iām sorry, Iāve never actually asked @Scorch whether heās filed papers of incorporation, which arenāt actually required to buy a .com domain as @dougl points out. Thatās not the most important point there. Hereās an important point from that page to which you linked:
K40 Whisperer is a free open-source program released under the GNU General Public License (GPL).
While it is possible to build a successful business around free, open soure software (I know; Iāve been there done that) one of the things that is not present on that page is anything either about purchasing K40 Whisperer or purchasing a support contract. Itās just offered without money and without price.
K40 Whisperer was, I think, the first free, open source software that is capable of driving the K40 (at least with that control board). But as @Scorch pointed out, itās not the only one (see the K40 Intro linked from the site banner for more information). I donāt think there is any commercially-provided control software where you can actually get support for driving these machines.
I hear your frustration, but Iām trying to suggest that taking your frustration out on someone who has given you and everyone else a gift is unkind.
@easytarget gave you some really constructive help: If Affinity isnāt writing SVG files after your power outage, asking on the Affinity forums sounds like a great place. And @dougl gave you additional really constructive feedback to post here the actual files you are having trouble with.
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Scorchworks.com is just a web page. I (Scorch) put my projects on that web page. The are no products or services for sale on the Scorch Works web page. Scorch Works is not registered as a company
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Years and years ago when I used DOS and Windows and later after switching to OS/2 and UNIX but supported Windows users, I was surprised at how many casually pirated software for Windows. To them it was all free stuff and just a disk copy or picked up super cheap at the swap meets.
With lots of cross platform software development tools available so lots of open source software(OSS) is made available on 2-3 of the major OSās, I wonder how many of these pirate types think OSS is the same as the other software they āhaveā.
And I would not likely have a laser cutter today had @Scorch not provided for free to anyone the K40 Whisperer software in early 2018. I had been aware of the lower priced CO2 lasers but also aware of their Windows-only Corel software to control them but stopped running Windows over a decade earlier.
Itās people like him who make places like this, MakerForums, possible.
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Iāll ask on the Affinity user group if anyone is actually using Affinity Designer with Whisperer. That might lead somewhere.
For the record, Iām using Affinity Designer with K40 Whisperer, and itās worked perfectly. I was using it with K40 running on my Mac until the the Macās python libraries got completely and irrecoverably scrambled, so now I have to run K40 on my Ubuntu server. Still has very little issue with the Affinity .svg files (aside from complaining about not knowing the default resolution, but I click āokā and it loads it just fine.)