I have a vynal cutting plotter and the makers of the plotter's software that came with it recently told me to use incscape to import custom designs onto my plotter's cutting program. i can do this easily with text but im trying to re-create a logo for a high school in hawaii, aiea high school, so that i can make banners for them. Their logo consists of 2 simple shapes, one is just a rectangle and the other is something similar to a "j". for some reason the rectangle with import into my cutting program, but no matter what i do, the "j" looking part will not import. any ideas?

It's probably something about how the J shape was made. Unfortunately, the possibilities are too numerous to outline for you. So if you could upload the SVG either to the forum as attachment, or elsewhere, we can examine it for you.

We have a forum for people using Inkscape with various brands of cutting machines (Inkscape and Cutters), so you might find a clue in messages posted there. Although it's a fairly new forum, with limited topics, but growing fast.