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signlab.. or flexisign
hi folks,,, just asking your opinion, as i dont know yet,, if you all had a choice which softwear would u choose, signlab or flexisign.. its the vinyl edition iam talking about…any reasons?? any pointers and help please… cheers for now. kn.
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64 Replies
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ps…. i seem to be getting best deal on flexisign.. ????????
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Signlab 7.1 is the best sign software in the world if you can afford it otherwise flexisign will get you by also.
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Best thing to do is download the demo versions, and see which you get on with best. I recommend signlab, but have never used flexi, so I’m biased.
Peter
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Haven’t used flexi sign so can comment on that, have used sign lab from day one and wouldn’t like to use anything else.
Lynn
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ive got a demo version of flexi ….but na it looks far to complex looks to me if you have to go a really long wayt round to do the simplest things ill my stick withmy signlab 4.95 on 98 after all a cut letter is a cut letter
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quote brian little:ill my stick withmy signlab 4.95 on 98 after all a cut letter is a cut letterquite right brian…………. 😉 ive still got one machine doing the same also..it always works eh 😀
nik
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cheers everyone,,,looks like i will push for signlab,,, may cost a few quid more??? maybe better in the end…. i have the demo cd,, i like it,, but then :lol1:
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Have a search on the boards as this has been discussed quite a bit, anyone using signlab will tell you it is the best and anyone using flexi will tell you flexi is best.
The truth is that they are both dedicated signmaking programs and both will do an excellent job, some things are easier in Flexi and some things easier in signlab. Probably best to have a look at both and go with whatever you feel comfortable with yourself. -
I think Flexi is more than Signlab (the full version anyway)
But then it should be as it’s loads better:)
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I think Flexi is more than Signlab (the full version anyway)
But then it should be as it’s loads better:)
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quote jonm01:I think Flexi is more than Signlab (the full version anyway)
But then it should be as it’s loads better:)
Can you say why?
if not please dont make sweeping statements, its not constructive or informative to a prospective purchaserPeter
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Peter, I seem to remember something similar last time someone asked which software was best. Trouble is no-one could give a valid reason why one was better than the other. You are quite right in what you say though if people can’t give a reason why one program is better than another then it is normally best to say nothing.
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Well, I wouldn’t buy either of them.
Valid reasons?
Design
In nineteen years in this trade I have never come across anything I wanted to do that couldn’t be done in Illustrator at a fraction of the price. A consideration when you have four workstations.Cutting.
I’m lost for words, I really am. We’ve just had to start using Flexi to drive our new cutter and it’s abominable. Our old cutting software was simply a case of loading file, re-sizing, specify quantity, and press the "Go" button. Fast, fun and fumble free. I could teach a new employee how to use it in ten minutes.Compare that with Flexi where I had to get my youngest employee sitting in a corner with the instruction book for a week before we could be reasonably confident in using it. Now we’ve got to waste even more time letting the youngster train the rest of the staff. Including me, and I really have got better things to do. Even now, we’re not entirely sure what’s going to happen when we press "Go".
I honestly get the impression that the software designers sat down and tried to turn a basically simple job into something as complicated and difficult to use as they possibly could. They have succeeded magnificently.
My conclusion is that if you are a one man band, using the software yourself, and are prepared to invest significant amounts of time learning how to get the best out of it, then one of these industry specific packages might be fine. If you want ease of use in a production environment, then look elsewhere.
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John with SL you can install a remote spooler and then just send it to the pc that controls the cutter, then the operator just loads the cutter and says cut.
maybe that will not work for you if you are all mac?
Nick.
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John, I don’t disagree with your reasoning at all, for one I don’t have the knowledge to and secondly it is your opinion but I am surprised by one of your comments.
OK I was already an old fart when I started out making signs as I had a career elsewhere but you say you have been doing this for 19 years and have never found anything a problem with illustrator.
It’s only what I have been told but I was under the impression that Flexisign and Signlab had become popular with the sign industry in the early days of vinyl because the other packages around like illustrator, corel, freehand etc were not up to the job.I know all that has changed with time and there is now a lot of software about that is more than capable of doing the job at a fraction of the price of either Flexisign or Signlab so there is no real need to spend that sort of money on software unless you have a couple of spare pots of the stuff lying about but as I said before I have been led to believe that back then it was a bit of a must.
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I dont disagree either,
just I’m not clever enough to use Illustrator, or corel efficiently,
signlab I feel comfortable with, and it works for me.
Not sure on the cost though, how much is illustrator full package, buying from scratch compared with signlab print and cut?Peter
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Martin, I’ve been using Illustrator since version 88 and, like I said, I’ve never had a problem doing anything I needed to do.
Peter, there is no "full package" of Illustrator. They don’t do cut down versions. Everything is in the current price of about four hundred quid. I don’t want to waste an hour comparing feature lists but I would bet an equivilent list in either Flexi or Signlab would be into four figures.
Add to that, better integration with other Adobe packages, like Photoshop and Acrobat, together with better compatibility with any files that customers send me and I know what I want to use.
Perhaps you could answer a question for me, I read on here about people having fonts, but only Signlab ones. What’s that about?
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Whichever package you use expect a steep learning curve. Flexi, SL, AI and Coreldraw all do things in their own way and anyone spending a lot of time on one program will find the others unwieldy and difficult.
We used flexi pro up to 5.8 and found this easy to use for for vinyl cutting but some screen controls were antiquated. I believe it was ported from MACs so used typical mac controls. It was still running happily on a win98 pc until last week running legacy files on a mutoh SC650. Colour control was also left behind on this older version and support was limited.
We have run Signlab for 2+ years and although not perfect, I think this is currently the best all round sign software available. Allied to this is also some of the best back up I have ever experienced from the cadlink team. They really do listen and have incorporated several of the wish list items posted on this forum. You only have to check out how quick they are to respond to queries on the forum to verify this.
We still use Corel and even AI for some design work, particularly if the customers file has arrived in this format, but I don’t think either of these packages can offer the simple one-click solutions to sign making problems. Sure, if you know your stuff you can reproduce the results but not without some effort and a fair bit of knowledge. If sending your files to a full print and cut rip solution then much of this work will done here, but otherwise SL will save you a bundle of time.
Colin
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John don’t know what that is about ? but we use sign lab have 1000’s of fonts not all sign lab !!! spect it depends if you want to broaden your font out look, we have bought letterhead fonts and myriads of others all work fine in sign lab 🙄
Lynn
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Thanks for that information Lynn. I asked because back in the early days a lot of systems used proprietary font formats and I wondered if it was still the same. I guessed that that had gone the way of Gerber sprocketing. 😀
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John, signlab fonts, are mainly cadlinks versions of commercial and free fonts. but they are much better when scaled up, they dont have straight and notchy edges like many ttfs
not normally an issue to joe public
but I can see the difference
Peter
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Colin, just out of interest what made you switch from Flexi to signlab? As you have said different programs do things differently and it is always a steep learning curve. If you were using flexi why didn’t you upgrade to a newer version of flexi as it would have been easier just to learn to use new features and I would have thought it would also be cheaper to upgrade than buy a completely new package. Like I say I am just interested in peoples reasons for making these sort of decisions.
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I think the fonts supplied with signlab are "proper" signmaking fonts. These usually have uniform start and finish points so that when the head is traveling from letter to letter the blade is facing in the correct position to start the next letter and has minimum travel and less caster action. The same sort of fonts are supplied with flexi but both are proprietary so will not work with other software (AI, Corel etc).
This is not true of type one or TTF which can be all over the place. For large text its not too much of a problem but on smaller text it can cause weeding issues. I think some new plotters reduce or eliminate this problem but not all.
Colin
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quote Peter Normington:not normally an issue to joe public
Not normally an issue to me either. 🙂
I expect some free or cheap fonts to be less than perfect, but I don’t remember any problems with anything from a reputable foundry.
Having said that, we don’t use many TTFs. Most of our stuff is legacy postscript, although increasingly we are using OpenType.
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Martin, simple really, when I bought my Gerber edge package Spandex were actually including the latest all-singing all-dancing version of SL in the deal as an alternative to Omega. I had always hankered after some of the features so thought it would be worth the effort to learn again, particularly as these would be used on different workstations so 2 dongles needed anyway.
I was disappointed to learn that Spandexs support was less than adequate but Cadlink took up the support and we haven’t looked back.
Colin
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quote John Childs:quote Peter Normington:not normally an issue to joe public
Not normally an issue to me either. 🙂
I expect some free or cheap fonts to be less than perfect, but I don’t remember any problems with anything from a reputable foundry.
Having said that, we don’t use many TTFs. Most of our stuff is legacy postscript, although increasingly we are using OpenType.
Its quite ironic though, that you refer to "foundries" rather than CAD fonts 😀
gutenberg would be turning in his grave, if he realised how simple it is today to produce a font….
Peter -
Might upset a few people here, but I think creating artwork in either Corel or Illustrator ( basically the same program, as are all vector artwork software – its only straight and curved lines after all ! ) is the best way.
If you can create your artwork in a vector program, then you can export to any old software to cut it.
I can see the appeal of all in one programs like Signlab and Flexi, but you are paying a huge amount for the artwork production part of the software when there isnt really any need to. I havent seen anything in Signlab or Flexi that cant be done in Corel ( and x3 is a lot more advanced than the earlier incarnations ) just as easily.
All cutting software will work in pretty much the same way, it just converts the artwork into a format the cutter understands, so paying thousands for software that also has a clone of Corel / Illustrator stuck on ( which in the case of Corel you can buy for a little over £200 ) seems a waste.
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quote Peter Normington:Its quite ironic though, that you refer to “foundries” rather than CAD fonts 😀
It’s not me Peter. That’s what they call themselves. Bit like some of our colleagues describing themselves as "signwriters". 😀
Although I will admit to commiting that great calumny myself on occasion because, when people ask what I do for a living, it is easier to tell them that than cope with their blank stares when I tell them I manufacture and apply vehicle livery.
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For general vinyl cutting then most vector packages will get there eventually but for printing, especially spot colours, then Signlab would leave X3 standing (and I use both extensively). For example producing overlap welds to prevent white bleeding through the two colours and then applying different temperature settings to each foil as one is overlapped and adjusting the various layers to suit the foil order is all on a single button! Not something I would want to try in a design program.
Colin
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Signlab used to use wfn fonts which was the font format for Corel many moons ago and VEF which were used by Sign Studio – now WFN, VEF, True Type, Type 1 and Open Type are supported directly and they can be converted to VEF for enhanced editing ie kerning. I find that Signlab is better for some jobs and Corel X3 is better for others, reallt need the both to be covered. As for Illustrator, I flirted with it as V7 when Corel was also V7, I never installed again as it was so arkward, unintuitive and featureless compared to Corel. Each to his own though.
Alan D -
http://www.givemehelp.com/fullflexi8demo.html fiolks have a look at this
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hmmm 😕 big brother is watching
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well i use flexi, and i love it, i have tried signlab, but i simply didnt like the way it looked, maybe something u can change, but i have used flexi now and i wouldnt chnge
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Reasons for using a dedicated sign package;
Things like outlines, welding, shadow etc. are designed to work for cutting, packages like illustrator are designed for printing so strokes all have overlapping lines etc.
The fact you can’t work at 1:1 scale in illustrator is enough to drive me up the wall. I can be working on a van or huge shopfront in Flexi and if I want to know the size of any part of the design I just click on it, I don’t have to mentally work out what it is from my 1:20 or whatever scale layout.
I don’t know what the problem with cutting is in Flexi? I just told it what cutter we have and that’s it. Press cut, then send and off it goes. Never had a problem with anything unexpected happening.
As for Flexi vs Signlab. I find Flexi has a much better interface and is far quicker to use than signlab. I’d challenge anyone to a ‘race’ to produce a cut ready file in Flexi over Signlab or one of the illustration packages.
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Jon,
Not being able to work at 1:1 is not a problem. An Illustrator plug-in called CADtools lets you work at whatever scale you like and gives you actual dimensions with just a click.
Working to scale is practically essential to us anyway, as whatever we design has to fit onto an A4 sheet for printing or sending to customers for them to print.
Cutting with Flexi? If you fancy a run over here I will show you what cutting software should be like. That’s quite apart from the expense of having design facilities on a computer that never gets used for design work. Where’s the sense in that?
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We help to distribute laser engravers into the sign making industry, for that CorelDraw is probably the best to use, but on saying that any program with a print option would or could be used.
We also help to distribute those vinyl cutter thingies, no models mentioned, but there is a Flexi OEM package that goes with it, for me I find the software easy to use and the design screen not cluttered with a icon for this action or a icon for that action, just a nice design screen and any icons on one side, out of the line of vision just like the missus when you are watching the footie and she doing the ironing lol
I reckon if I started out with CorelDraw or Signlab or any other program first then I would if happy with it would sing its praises over any other program out there.
I guess you need to find a program that is easy for you to understand and use, but you will not learn a design program in weeks or months, the basics you will but the shortcuts will take longer.
Oooh I can just feel the mod edit coming on 😛
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quote John Childs:Working to scale is practically essential to us anyway, as whatever we design has to fit onto an A4 sheet for printing or sending to customers for them to print.
Not sure what you mean John, I design in signlab at full scale and still print to a4?
As for design software to cut with, both flexi and signlab can have remote spoolers to drive the cutter without the clutter…
Peter
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quote Nigel Pugh – Grafityp:Oooh I can just feel the mod edit coming on 😛
Nah, it’s probably just wind. *rofl*
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quote Peter Normington:As for design software to cut with, both flexi and signlab can have remote spoolers to drive the cutter without the clutter…
Yes, Nick mentioned that above and I’m looking in to how it works.
Is it just a remote print buffer, or will the computer running the plotter work as stand-alone? That is load a file, no matter which of our design stations it was created on, and then cut it.
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I was going to put a witty reply here to JC’s post, but I reckon if I did then I would be dragged down further into the mire 😛
Sorry for my digress from the original question.
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quote John Childs:quote Peter Normington:As for design software to cut with, both flexi and signlab can have remote spoolers to drive the cutter without the clutter…
Yes, Nick mentioned that above and I’m looking in to how it works.
Is it just a remote print buffer, or will the computer running the plotter work as stand-alone? That is load a file, no matter which of our design stations it was created on, and then cut it.
John as far as I am aware, you can install signlabs print and cut manager on a remote computer and send the files from any workstation (each must have a separate dongle) the print and cut is a stand alone program, I stand to be corrected, but I think cadlink have plans to lauch it as a separate rip. I picked up a demo cd at sign uk
Peter
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quote Peter Normington:and send the files from any workstation
That’s what I’m afraid of Peter. Once the design is done and saved on our server I don’t want the design workstation to having anything to do with cutting.
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quote John Childs:quote Peter Normington:and send the files from any workstation
That’s what I’m afraid of Peter. Once the design is done and saved on our server I don’t want the design workstation to having anything to do with cutting.
John they wouldn’t, the print and cut manager does not need to be installed on the design station.
Why wouldnt you want the design station to have anything to do with cutting, The design should be done with cutting in mind?
I’m not sure if we are running on the same rails here?Peter
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quote John Childs:Jon,
Working to scale is practically essential to us anyway, as whatever we design has to fit onto an A4 sheet for printing or sending to customers for them to print.
Are you saying that everything you design is done at A4 size? Why can’t you just send them a PDF? And why can’t Illustrator have a Fit to Page option like every other program? That is something else that has driven me mad with Illustrator!
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cheers everyone,,, great response,, keep up the Good work, maybe iam more confused now, but a great help all of your replies. cheers kn
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quote Peter Normington:Why wouldnt you want the design station to have anything to do with cutting, The design should be done with cutting in mind?
Design is done with cutting in mind of course, but here they are two completely separate jobs, done by different people, at different times, on different computers.
I will do a layout and design on my computer and save it to the server. The girls in the cutting shop will open the files I produce, maybe many times over many years in the case of regular fleet work, and I can’t have that interrupting what I might be working on today.
It’s probably an example of what I was trying to say above, these things might work well iin a smaller place, maybe where one person on one computer does everything, but in a more production orientated place the way they work falls down.
Converting postscript to HPGL is a job that could probably be done with the computing power on my mobile phone so again I ask the question, why do I have to have a design programme, be it Illustrator, Flexi or Signlab, on a computer that does nothing other than run a plotter.
When you have a bit of spare time pop up for lunch one day and I’ll show you how we work. I really can’t believe that we are that unusual for a small to mid size sign shop.
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quote jonm01:Are you saying that everything you design is done at A4 size? Why can’t you just send them a PDF? And why can’t Illustrator have a Fit to Page option like every other program? That is something else that has driven me mad with Illustrator!
Mostly, yes.
Most vans get drawn at 1:25 scale, the files saved and eventually cut at 2500% of their original size. Easy.
I’m not sure of your point on pdfs. Whatever we draw to fit on A4 gets saved as a pdf and printed for use here or emailing to customers.
I’ve never missed a fit to page option, in fact I didn’t know Illustrator hadn’t got one. Surely using that would lose the sizing?
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John,
the print and cut manager from signlab is stand alone, it is a production tool, and can be used as you describe. it can sit on a computer that just drives the cutter/printer, the jobs can be managed, saved with all the print settings etc and recalled as needed.Flexi and signlab are both used in environments, with design and production as separate entities
Peter
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Hi John… you have me confuzled.
First point is the scaling. From what you have said I can see that it’s not a problem for you and you have a quick and easy work around, but using a dedicated package means you have no work around to use and when you go to print you hit fit to page as mentioned. Nothing is altered using this, it just scales it, exactly the opposite from what you do and you have no issues so there are none with this method.
Your machine that you cut from, so many people seem to cut from programmes like corel and you’ve never used flex or signlab before so why do you have to now? Surely the plotter is not dictating what software you use?
I’m sure you could work it so there was no interference… a temp folder called ‘to be cut’ or something where a copy of all finished files is dropped, your cutting girls (I want some!) can deal with any files that are in this folder. I’m not sure how p&c manager works as a stand alone, as far as I know the job still has to be sent from signlab so therefor you would need a copy on that machine otherwise your designers would all have to break the jobs up and send them. Though you could get the most basic version of signlab for this and it would not be as costly.
Anyhoo I’m sure that was no help at all, I’m just a bit confused!
G (obviously bored on a Saturday morning, going out soon!!!)
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I’m confused. Illustrator does have a fit to page option in the print dialogue
box. I design everything at 100%, and have used Illustrator for years. The
only time I need to work at scale, is if Onyx throws a wobbly when ripping.
This would seem to be an Onyx problem rather than an Illustrator one. Also
do all my cutting from Illustrator using Mimaki Finecut, and have had no
problems so far.Cheers,
Jamie. -
Gavin,
You describe working to scale as a "work around", as if it is second class way of doing things. I don’t see it that way. From my first job as a trainee draughtsman I’ve worked to scale because in the days before computers there was no other way of getting a forty foot trailer onto an A0 sheet (although it was probably imperial sized then) and what I am doing now is exactly the same thing, but on screen instead of paper.
You say that nothing is altered by a "fit to page" command, but how do you know what scale the resulting print comes out at? Can a fitter take your drawing and measure an unspecified dimension?
The plotter and computer in conjunction ARE dictating software. We can no longer use our preferred cutting programme because the old computer died and the software will not run on the current OS. On top of that, drivers for our new cutter are not available for our old programme anyway. The solution, as yourself and Peter point out, is the cheapest version of Flexi we can get, and that is what we are doing, although we are never going to use any of the design features. Now that is what I call a work around.
This is the way we had to go with our Mimaki last year and, like Jamie, we use FineCut on that with no problems. Except of course I had to buy another totally pointless copy of Illustrator to put on the computer that drives it.
I’m just building up a collection of unused and unwanted design packages.
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John, nothing changes when fitting to page size, in fact working from an A4 cant be accurate anyway, if you are using it as a template. and taking measurements from it, on an a4 sheet, a 2mm line drawn on a 20′ van, would not be measurable.
I am still confused as to why you think one program like signlab or flexi is not better than using several, as you already do, one to design, and another to cut, and yet one more to print?Peter
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quote Peter Normington:I am still confused as to why you think one program like signlab or flexi is not better than using several, as you already do, one to design, and another to cut, and yet one more to print?
1. Money. I don’t want to pay for a design prog on computers that will never design anything.
2. Speed. All these design progs are big and bloated. The difference in the time it takes from deciding what we want to cut to getting the blade moving is quite considerable.
3. Safety. Using a design prog gives the cutter operator the option to save any changes, and I don’t want them to have the ability to accidentally do that. I suppose I could look into locking files once they are designed, but that would only give me another operation at the design stage for every file I produce, and make it more fiddly for me to make any necessary changes.
4. Ease of use. Previously I could train a new user to cut vinyl in ten minutes and that was great because they were quickly productive and made fewer learning curve mistakes, saving time and wasted vinyl. I’ve lost the ability to let short term employees, like youngsters working in the school holidays, to use the cutters. Our current job involves five metre graphics from 1220 wide Avery 900 at about £12 per metre and I can’t afford them making too many mistakes with that.
You’re absolutely right about scaling errors, but we draw with 0.25mm lines and at 1:25 that is more than good enough for 99% of the work we do. On the odd occasion that we need to be more accurate we would measure an actual van, but in those cases we would have to do that anyway because even at full size the van outlines are not always accurate enough.
By the way, we only use two programmes – Illustrator to design and print, plus another to cut. The reason that isn’t a problem, in fact I consider it preferable is, like I said above, they are completely different jobs, done by different people, at different times on different computers.
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Hi John, I understand better now. I disagree about the scale issue but then it’s just what your used to. An advantage of having things to scale on the screen is you can use the software dimension features to show the sizes of the cut graphics, it’s then the fitters job to measure the panels and make it look like the drawing (sweeping statement, but you know what I mean?).
Very annoying situation your in and I can easily see your gripe, computers are crap and never quite do what you want them to. Seems there’s always a compromise to be made. One small point though about the plotter operators changing files, you could do as I suggested and have a cut folder that jobs are copied into with the original kept so that the cutters don’t get their mits on it. Don’t know if it would work in your situation but if it did it would be one less headache for you.
Gavin
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Gavin,
Like I said, CADtools let’s us work to scale, while being unaware of it. All dimensions are shown as actual size. That’s not a sweeping statement about the fitter’s job. That’s exactly what happens in real life when the fitter may not necessarily have had any part in the sale, design or drawing process.
We do have a cut jobs folder, that everybody has access to, but it is pointless keeping another. Even if there is a pristine copy kept somewhere (as indeed there is on our back-ups) it’s the files that the cutting girls use on a day to day basis that’s important. Depending on how obvious it is, an inadvertantly amended file could go for weeks before somebody noticed.
This might all seem like nit picking to those who cut and fit all their work on their own premises, for whom errors are instantly noticable and can be rectified quickly and cheaply, without the client ever knowing. To us, where our mistakes can find themselves anywhere in the country and be very expensive indeed to rectify, anything that helps eliminate a potential source of errors is important. Work out the cost of changing three phone numbers on fifty vans spread around in a radius of two hundred miles from your base. Labour, meals, motoring expenses, nights out etc etc. It can get awfully expensive.
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can you lot that use corel draw or illustrator with windows drivers to run their plotters with, operate flatbed cnc routers(eg PACERS or equivalent). if not then that’s the difference in dedicated sign software. not all signs are made from vinyl lettering.
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quote lifesigns:not all signs are made from vinyl lettering.
True, my friend, true. But mine are. I’ve never had a call for routed lettering on vans. 🙂
I don’t see the relevance anyway because running a router is a specialist job, and for that it’s perfectly reasonable to expect to have to use specialist software.
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Hi John,
Is all your work vinyl based?
The other difference that I have found with the Corel is its not the best at spacing between lettering. I can tell a van a mile away that’s been designed in CorelDraw when it comes to the telephone number when you have "Tel:" on it, it never gets the spacing correct, and has to be done manually. SignLab gets it right first time. I’d never design a sign in Corel but will use its fantastic vector editing tools, that the makers of SignLab forgot to put in, which Flexi has. I feel more professional having SignLab under my belt. When I have a customer with me to design his van or sign, and when I load up SignLab, he or she can see we’re a kitted out.
When you come to cutting lots of the same object, how do you cope with repeats, do you manually copy paste lots of them, or just say to your cutting software how many you want and let the software work it all out for you.
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Yes, all vinyl based.
Our work is over 95% vehicles and whilst we will make an odd sign here or there for good existing customers, it’s not something we advertise and we avoid them where we can. The vast majority of the signs we have done have been vinyl as well, purely because the customers didn’t want to pay for anything better. In my time in the trade we have done three signs requiring routed letters, so obviously we aren’t going to gear up to make them ourselves.
In the same way that we specialise in vehicles, I’d rather leave routing to people who specialise in that, are good at it, have all the kit, and can supply a product that is better and probably cheaper than we could do it ourselves. Same goes for sign frames and a host of other things we occasionally get asked for. I’ve got a printer as well, but I’m not going to try to compete in the thousands of labels market against somebody with a dedicated label printer. I’ll just buy in from them, put on a mark-up, and pass on to my customer.
I know what you mean about kerning. But isn’t that more down to the quality of the font rather than the software it’s used on? It was mentioned above about Signlab fonts being better than the norm.
Ideally, for multiple copies, we should just have to specify the size and number we require. The software should then poll the cutter to get the vinyl width, decide how best to lay them out in the space available, then cut them. Doing that manually is what I want to avoid because that would make design facilities essential on the cutting computer, and I don’t see why they have to be.
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Three months on, using Flexi to try and cut vinyl, and I would like it to be known that NOTHING has happened to change my views given above on this thread.
One of my girls left last week, and another was on holiday, so on Monday I had to cut some stuff out myself. The sodding thing didn’t cut out the middles of all the letters and it took me an hour to work out why. I just don’t need that cr@p when I’m rushing to get work out.
Anybody know how to make a Graphtec work with Finecut?
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Reading all this is like the Mac / PC debate…let’s NOT go there.
At the end of the day we all work different and have different needs. Long and short of it. It is down to time, if your setup is functional and works why change. Many packages do way more than alot of us will ever need or use. I cut direct to a Roland from Corel, been using Corel since version 3 for litho print prior to cut vinyl. I don’t really want to spend a fortune on so called dedicated sign software. So I’m going to carry on like this until I have the need, or the time save warrants the investment.
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EASYSIGN all the way, i have used all the different softwares over the years an none can compete in ease of use and ability to perform, complex designs, not overly expensive can cut, RIP, profile for cnc router all from the one program. you can get a demo from http://www.easysign.com. the vectorising tools have to be the easiest to use of them all.
just my honest opinion
Ian
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I have Signlab, Easysign and Corel Draw, they all have an advantage over the other 2 in one respect or another if only I could combine the 3 together. For printing work only one for me though Corel Draw.
Alan D -
quote John Childs:Three months on, using Flexi to try and cut vinyl, and I would like it to be known that NOTHING has happened to change my views given above on this thread.
One of my girls left last week, and another was on holiday, so on Monday I had to cut some stuff out myself. The sodding thing didn’t cut out the middles of all the letters and it took me an hour to work out why. I just don’t need that cr@p when I’m rushing to get work out.
I’ve used about 3-4 different version of Flexi up to 7.6 and never had any problem. Never even had to set anything up other than tell it what cutter I’ve got.
For any cut vinyl job I could run rings round you trying to produce the same thing in Illustrator.
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