DXF Medic
Your SVG imports blank? The artwork is there, the paths are not.
Glowforge reports "no artwork in this print area". Easel shows an empty canvas. LightBurn imports half the drawing and skips the rest. The same file opens perfectly in Inkscape or Illustrator, so nothing is corrupt. The file contains things a browser can draw and a cutting tool cannot.
Quick answer: cutting software reads the geometry subset of SVG: paths and basic shapes. The usual blockers are live text that was never converted to paths, embedded raster images, clipping paths, styles hidden in CSS classes, and artwork sitting tiny or off to one side of a huge artboard. Convert text to paths, remove or trace the images, save as Plain SVG, and resize the artboard to the artwork.
A web format, read by machines
SVG was designed for browsers, and browsers implement all of it: text rendered in any font, embedded photos, filters, masks, CSS styling, even scripts. A laser or CNC importer implements the part that can become a toolpath: paths, rectangles, circles, ellipses, polygons, groups and their transforms. Everything outside that subset gets rejected with an error if you are lucky, or dropped silently if you are not.
That is why "the file looks fine" proves nothing. Inkscape shows you what a browser would show. Your cutting software shows you what survived the geometry filter. A blank import means the filter caught everything, not that the data is gone.
The five usual causes
| What disappears | Why | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Text and labels | Live <text> elements reference fonts instead of containing outlines. | Convert text to paths before export. |
| A logo or photo | Embedded raster <image>; Easel errors on these outright. | Remove it, or trace it into vectors. |
| Parts of the drawing | Clipping paths or masks that the importer cannot apply. | Release the clips and crop the geometry for real. |
| Objects with odd styling | Fills and strokes assigned via CSS classes. | Save as Plain SVG so styles are inlined. |
| Everything ("no artwork") | Small artwork on a huge artboard, or placed outside it, so it lands off the bed. | Resize the artboard to the artwork. |
Fix it in Inkscape or Illustrator
Inkscape
Select the text and run Path > Object to Path. The letters become ordinary outlines that any importer reads, at the cost of no longer being editable text, so keep an editable master copy. For the "no artwork" case, open File > Document Properties and use "Resize page to content" so the artboard hugs the drawing; this resolved the documented Glowforge cases. Finally, save as Plain SVG rather than Inkscape SVG to strip editor-specific extras.
Illustrator
Run Type > Create Outlines on all text before exporting. Check the document for placed or embedded images and remove them from the layer you export. If your import arrives at the wrong size rather than blank, that is a separate Illustrator quirk (72 vs 96 dpi), covered in the SVG wrong-size guide.
Easel
Easel is strict: it refuses SVGs containing embedded raster images and struggles with exotic constructs. The standing advice on the Inventables forum is to re-save the file as Plain SVG or SVG 1.1, with text converted to paths and images removed, and import that.
What DXF Medic can tell you about a blank SVG
DXF Medic reads the geometry subset of SVG: paths, rectangles, circles, ellipses, polygons and groups, including their transforms. Its real value for a blank import is the part most tools skip: it names what it could not read. Live text and embedded raster images show up as named findings instead of disappearing, so you learn in seconds whether your "empty" file is actually a text-conversion problem, an embedded image, or genuinely missing geometry.
To be clear about the limits: Medic does not convert text to paths and does not trace raster images into vectors. Those conversions need a font engine and your judgement, and they belong in Inkscape or Illustrator. Medic tells you precisely which of those jobs is left to do.
Find out why it is blank: drop the SVG into DXF Medic and get a named list of everything it could and could not read, plus checks for open contours, self-intersections and unit problems on what remains. Diagnosis is free and unlimited, and the file never leaves your browser.
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