Customers often send a PDF because it is what their design tool exports by default. A PDF can carry clean vector cut lines, but it can just as easily hide a flattened image, live fonts or stray objects. These checks help you decide in a few minutes whether a PDF is ready for the laser.
Zoom in to 800% or more. Vector lines stay sharp; a raster image turns blocky. A laser can engrave a raster image, but it cannot cut along it. If the outline you need to cut is part of an image, ask for the original vector file or a re-export with "preserve vector data" enabled.
Text that is still live depends on fonts installed on the machine that opens the file. If the font is missing, it may be substituted or dropped. Ask customers to convert text to outlines (also called "create outlines" or "object to path") before exporting.
Most shops map operations to stroke colours, for example pure red for cut and pure blue for score. A PDF exported from a design tool may turn pure red into a near-red value or a CMYK mix that your software does not recognise. Check the stroke colour values, not just how they look on screen, and publish your colour convention on the product page.
A cut outline with a small gap will not separate the part cleanly. In your vector editor, select each outline and confirm it is one closed path. Joining nearby end points usually fixes it.
Copies stacked on top of each other make the laser cut the same edge twice. Look for objects with identical bounds and remove the extras.
Make sure the artwork is at 100% scale and that the page or artboard is not larger than your machine bed. Measure one known dimension after import, and leave a margin from the material edge.
PDFs can contain clipping masks, hidden layers and white shapes that look invisible but still produce toolpaths. Release clipping masks and delete anything that is not part of the job.
If you sell laser or CNC work on Shopify and customers upload their own files, CutReady checks supported SVG, ASCII DXF and PDF files on the product page before add-to-cart, with size limits of 256 KB for SVG, 512 KB for ASCII DXF and 2 MiB for PDF. Files that fail are blocked with a clear message so the customer can fix them before ordering. It comes with a 14-day free trial, then 39 USD every 30 days.