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Five mistakes we see in uploaded files, and the one-minute fix for each

· KERF

Every file uploaded to kerf.au/quote is checked and priced the moment it lands, which means we get a very honest view of what goes wrong in design files. The encouraging news: it is nearly always one of the same five things, and none of them takes more than a minute to fix.

1. The text is still text

A sign, a label, a name plate. The design is finished, the file uploads, and the price never comes, because the lettering is still live type. Fonts do not travel inside a design file; your computer substitutes the letter shapes from the font on your machine, and ours cannot, because the whole point of cutting is that we need the shapes themselves.

The fix: convert text to outlines before exporting. In Illustrator that is Type, Create Outlines. In Inkscape, Path, Object to Path. In CAD, explode the text. The letters become geometry, and geometry cuts. One design note while you are there: the middle of an O falls out unless you use a stencil font or add bridges. More in the file preparation guide.

2. The part is not drawn at real size

This is the near miss we catch most, because it is not a refusal at all. The file prices fine, just for a part a fraction of the intended size, or ten times it. It happens because SVG, AI, PDF and EPS files are measured at their printed size, and artwork drawn for a screen or a page is rarely laid out at the dimensions of the finished part. Files drawn in inches produce the same surprise, out by exactly 25.4.

The fix: look at the measured size on the part card before you order. It is printed next to the preview on every part. If it is wrong, the Resize control corrects it in one step, with one-click buttons for the inches case and the factor-of-ten case. Units and scale has the full story.

3. The outline has a gap

Two lines that nearly meet. A corner where the arc stops a hair short of the line. To an eye at normal zoom the outline looks closed; to the checker it is a shape with a hole in its boundary, and a jet cannot follow an outline that never closes. Doubled-up lines, where the same edge is drawn twice, cause the same confusion in the other direction.

The fix: zoom into the corners and close the gaps, or use your program's join command on the outline. Our checker flags the problem when the file lands and the part card says what it found. If you cannot see it, the Get help fixing it link on the part sends us the file and we will find it with you. The rules live in closed contours.

4. The helpers came along for the ride

Dimensions, a title block, a border, centre lines, the construction geometry that made the drawing possible. All useful on a drawing, all disastrous in a cutting file, because we cut geometry, not intentions. A dimension line reads as a very thin part. A border reads as a very large one. The price that comes back is for all of it.

The fix: before exporting, delete everything that is not the part. The test is brutal and simple: if the jet should not cut it, it should not be in the file. Thirty seconds with the delete key, covered in layers and colours.

5. The file is a picture of a part

A scanned drawing, a photo of a sketch, a PDF where the linework is a bitmap pasted onto the page. These carry no geometry at all, just pixels arranged to look like geometry, and there is no outline in them for a machine to follow. It is the one problem on this list that no export setting fixes.

The fix: the drawing needs to be traced in CAD or a vector program at real size. If that is not something you do, email the scan to hello@kerf.au with the key dimensions and we will sort it out with you. What we need and why is in rejection reasons.

And if it still will not price

Upload it anyway. Every file that prices is still reviewed before it is cut, and every file that will not price gets a plain-language note on the part card saying why, with a Get help fixing it link that sends us everything we need. A file with a problem is a conversation, not a dead end. That goes for one bracket in 3 mm mild steel just as much as a production run.

Put a file through the checker

Upload it and see the measured size and price in seconds. If something is off, the card tells you what.

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