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what is the best corel draw & ctting software?
Hey all,
I’m kinda new to these forums.. need a little bit of advice.The company that I work for tends to do a bit of sign work every now and then (of various different types).
A lot of it requires me to cut out vinyl lettering..The person that worked in this position before (designing and cutting out the lettering), hadnt ever really researched the best possible software and so when I took over, I was stuck with a very outdated CorelDraw 7 and Wissen CutBoy.
I’ve been playing around with CorelDraw since I was young and first started using a computer. (I started with CorelDraw 4, then moved onto 7.)
Recently, I’ve decided that I want to try and update the software and try and bring everything up to date.
I’m kinda new to the whole cutting thing however. But the designing I find really easy.
We use a Roland CAMM-1 (CM-500), (and also have a Roland ColourCAMM that I want to try and get working)..
In the past, works were designed in CD7, exported (as curves) as an AI (v4) file into CutBoy and cut from there.
I recently purchased CorelDraw X3 and was wondering what the most up to date (and any you recommend), cutting software is..
I know you can cut from CorelDraw X3 directly, I was up all night trying to figure it out (the most I can get it to do is make the blade move across the vinyl and change the origin :S)..
so if anyone could give me a kinda set by step method of doing that, it would be apprecited too. (I know to convert text to curves, no fill, outline 0.001mm thick.)
Sorry the post is long winded, I didn’t really know what to put.
And I am new to this sort of thing.Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Aaron. 🙂 -
10 Replies
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load the roland drivers and they will be seen as printers which will drive the cutters direct out of coral
chris
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I’ve tried that and followed the intructions in the readme as best as I can, but all that it does when I click print is:
The plotter will show "Processing..",
the bit where the blade is will move along to the other side of the vinyl (not pressing down/cutting)..The "origin" setting with show up on the screen of the plotter showing new co-ordinates.
The only thing I can think of, is if it doesnt know "where" the vinyl is, or where it’s origin is supposed to be or something.
But I don’t know where/how I’m ment to set that. Or even if that is the problem.(Like I said, I’m new to this. It’s the first time I’ve ever tried cutting directly from CorelDraw.)
Thanks anyway though. 🙂
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you have a page mismatch
set a custom page size in the driver say 575 x 2000mm – set the page size in coral to the same place your graphic to be cut in the top left corner go to print see preview if in the same place press print if not in the correct place you still have a mismatch of page sizes between the driver and coralchris
also while in print preview you can move the graphic to a different part of the cutting area
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Sorry if this sounds like a stupid question.
But before when I cut, (in cutboy), I would set the "height"
to equal the width of the vinyl (so if I was using a 600mm roll, the height would be 600mm and the width would be as long as I wanted to cut (say 2000mm)).This would leave me with a landscape style page..
Whereas you say I should have (example) 575mm x 2000mm,
making it a portrait style page.Does this mean that I would have to rotate my work by 90 degrees to make it cut as before?
Sorry if it sounds stupid. I normally just find it easier to cut on a landscape style sheet..
(My wording is terrible..)
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you can set it landscape but both driver and coral page must be the same
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Aaron,
I’m not familiar with your software, but……….
You can’t cut to the full width of the vinyl roll because of the space need for the rollers to work in. As Chris intimates, a realistic usable width is 575mm.
It may be that your cutter head goes across to check the vinyl width and looking for 600mm, can’t find it, and, confused, refuses to do anything more.
Try cutting something smaller, say 200mm x 200mm on a 500 x 500 page size and see if that works.
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we started with exactly the same setup for many years… few niggles but mainly works well and simple. Illustrator transfer is still used quite a bit these days.
Now using CorelX3 with gerber software/plotters/routers.
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quote John Childs:You can’t cut to the full width of the vinyl roll because of the space need for the rollers to work in. As Chris intimates, a realistic usable width is 575mm.
Yeah.
I know you can’t realistically use the whole width of the vinyl. I didn’t take that into account when I was posting. Sorry. 🙁In cutboy however, you could put whichever width of vinyl, and as long as the output wasnt wider than the actual useable width, it would cut it anyway.
(ie: say you had a 600mm roll, useable 575mm, you could set the width to 600mm on CutBoy and as long as you werent trying to cut more than 575mm, it would still cut. 🙂Thanks to everyone for the replies by the way.
I managed to work it out…
As Chris said, it was a mismatch of print sizes.Just wondering if anyone could perhaps help with the other question, if it’s not too much trouble.
Which other programs are primarly used for cutting? Also what are the advantages and disadvantages (I personally don’t see the need for it, if you can cut straight from Corel/Illustrator.. they don’t seem to offer any extra features. – So if someone could enlighten me it would really help..)
And how do the results compare between cutting from Corel and from another program.. are they as smooth/accurate.. etc
Sorry about all the questions.
But you’ve all been a massive help and I hope to hang around here a lot more in the future. It seems a lot could be learnt by talking to people with experience in the industry. 🙂
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quote :Which other programs are primarly used for cutting?
signlab is proberbly the best as there are a few features aimed at cutters but i would not buy it i am more than happy with my set up as cut strate from coral i use 4 different printer/ cutters. thake time to learn all the extras in the programme weld and trim are wonderful.
chris
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I know of quite a few people cutting right from Corel Draw to Roland plotters without any special software other than the print drivers that you an download from the Roland website.
Visit letterhead.com and search for the topic on their Bullboard. It’s been covered there many times. The two pro’s at it that I know go by Old Paint (Joe Perbish, not sure about spelling) and Applicator (Dave Grundy). It may be worth the call to talk to them too. Both are quite helpful and friendly if you don’t wake them up early 🙂Checkers
a.k.a. Brian Born
Harrisburg, PA USA
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