I took the sample traditional3.svg and cut and paste the objects onto different layers, so I could use different colours. After I did that I can't plot though: I get:

"Warning: unable to draw object, please convert it to a path first."

when I try. If I click an object on that layer and select Path/Object to Path the status message at the bottom says "No objects to convert to path in the selection".

I've not used Inkscape before so I'm probably just doing something dumb. Any ideas?

Somewhere in your document, you've created an object which isn't a path (or readily reduced to a path by the Eggbot Control extension). You can try "Select All in All Layers" then do Path > "Object to Path". Most likely a text character.

It's also possible to get into the SVG file items which the currently packaged Eggbot Control extension will complain about. Namely, an XML comment. Inkscape doesn't normally put those in but other XML editors or tools might have. (I discovered this when I put a comment in manually and then discovered that the XML parser used in Python by Inkscape treats comments oddly.) This was
"Defect 28" fixed on 17 October.

Dan

Thanks Dan. I tried the Select All In All Layers then Object To Path and Stroke To Path but both say there's nothing to convert and picking 2 for a layer named "2 swirls" still reports that error.

I put the svg at http://dl.dropbox.com/u/395371/traditional3-layered.svg in case anyone can see what I might have done wrong. I didn't create anything just did cut-and-paste.

I did group a couple of things before putting them on separate layers but Ungroup didn't help either.

You have unintentionally embedded and image in that SVG file. And yes, it's in the layer
entitled "2 swirls". It's a PNG formatted image of height 160 and width 3269 pixels. And you
have another image in "4 zigzag". All total, there's 4 or 5 images embedded in that SVG document.

It looks like you moved things to layers by taking screen snapshots or otherwise converting things to images. You cannot readily plot images on eggs with the EggBot. (However, you can do TSP art as per

http://wiki.evilmadscience.com/TSP_art

Regards,
Dan

Thanks for looking Dan.

I can't imagine how that could have happened. I may have pressed Cmd-V instead of Ctrl-V at some point but I definitely didn't try and put images in there.

I'll scrap it and try my layered cut and paste again.

Cheers,
Dave

So the same thing is happening to me today:

1. Select an object and it shows as "Segment" in the status bar as I'd expect.
2. Select Edit/Cut or Edit/Copy
3. Select Edit/Paste or Paste-in-Place.
4. The cut or copied object appears in the top-left-hand corner but is now shown as a Bitmap in the status bar.

I cannot get it to paste it as a Segment. I can't figure out why it's doing this. I'm not choosing the "Make a Bitmap Copy" option under Edit.

This is on an iMac with up-to-date SnowLeopard and 0.48 of Inkscape.
Running Inkscape on my 10.10 Ubuntu box I can cut and paste a Segment and the pasted one is still a Segment as you'd expect. This is really odd.

I saved the svg on the Mac to Dropbox and opened it on my Linux box and cut and paste still worked fine as a Segment. So this has to be a configuration issue on my Mac install.

Ok, found the bug:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/307005

It's in X on SnowLeopard and there's a workaround: you have to turn off "Update Pasteboard when Clipboard Changes" in the X11 preferences:

http://emberapp.com/finsprings/images/x11-preferences

That may have been documented here somewhere already but I am not good at reading instructions so I may have missed it.

Thanks, I've been wondering about that. Whenever I cut-and-paste something, it turns into an image. It seems pretty lame for a vector based drawing program to act like that. I'm using a Mac too. I looked all over the preferences in Inkscape and didn't find anything, didn't think to look in the X11 prefs, I'll have to try that.

The workaround I've been using is to use "clone" and then "unlink clone" to make copies of parts of my drawing.

Another problem I've been having is when I convert text to a path, I get this error, although it still draws right. I'm thinking there's a hidden object left behind after the text->path conversion.

Yeah, it's not Inkscape though, it's the X-11 implementation in OS X, which is trying to integrate the non-X world of the Mac with the X world via the clipboard and doing something odd when that option is turned on.