Craft Robo’s aptly named control software Robo Master uses a proprietary file format ‘GSD’. I work with CorelDraw, and while CDR is perfect for cutting directly (and in my opinion much better suited for complex Craft Robo projects than Robo Master), there is no way around the GSD format if you want to pass on designs to other people.

The way I do the conversion is as follows:

First, I split the art to be printed and the cutting outlines. The art to be printed goes into a PDF file, and the cutting outlines into a GSD. The reason behind this is that complex artwork does not convert correctly to GSD – only very simple shapes do.

Now, in order for this to work we need to make sure that the registration marks are included in the PDF and that they align with the registration marks used by Robo Master.

I have prepared a Corel Draw file with registration marks at the exact same positions as the default positions in Robo Master.

Using this file, these are the steps I follow:

1. Position the artwork and cutting outlines inside the registration marks
2. Move the cutting outlines to an invisible layer or delete them temporarily
3. Export the document as a PDF
4. Make the cutting outlines visible again or restore them. Delete everything else (make sure that the cutting outlines are ungrouped and are all in a single layer. This should be the only layer in the document)
5. Due to a bizarre behaviour of Robo Master, where imported DXF files have their center at the lower left corner of the page, we need to add an offset to the outlines. Go to ‘Arrange-> Transformation -> Position’, and enter 148.5 and 105 mm (half the page size for an A4 page). I have prepared a macro included in the template mentioned above you can use for that: Go to “Tools -> Visual Basic -> Play” and select RecordedMacros.dxfoffset
6. Now go to “File -> Save as…”, select as file type ‘DXF – AutoCAD’
7. In the AutoCAD export window, select “AutoCAD R13” as the export version, and select “Millimeters” as the export unit.
8. Open Robo Master, go to “File -> Load DXF…”
9. Save the file as a GSD file.

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