dcbevins

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dcbevins last won the day on January 13 2019

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About dcbevins

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    David
  • Birthday 07/17/1967

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    Grundy, VA

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  1. dcbevins

    Quick Question

    Like others have said, autotrace is available in many programs, but it will often not get you all the way there. Redrawing becomes nessacary on many images. That said, a centerline trace might work better for at least the housing. Your image, outline trace, centerline trace, your 2nd image, outlines trace from CorelDraw 2019. I didn't spend much time on the settings.
  2. dcbevins

    inkscape to signblazer problem

    Inkscpae still uses it requires ps2pdf from Ghostscript, to open ps or eps. This converts it to PDF, then poppler converts the pdf to svg. You won't see this if p2spdf is missing, (included in Ghostscript.) I think you are right in that it is not needed writing ps or eps files. Saving eps uses some cario component. It is probably not the culprit here, but some strange loop of saving and opening again in Inkscape could cause grief if ghostscript were missing. Still can't say much with out SEEING the files.
  3. dcbevins

    inkscape to signblazer problem

    You never said if you have ghostscript installed or not. Inkscape needs ghostscript for many postscript things. We here can't say much more without seeing files. The svg you are using in inksapce and the eps file out of inkscape. You can use dropbox or google drive or any other such service to make a sharable link. The forum itself might take a file attachment, but don't know it's limits.
  4. dcbevins

    inkscape to signblazer problem

    Can we see the files? Dropbox or Google Drive link or something. Is ghostscript installed on the new machine?
  5. dcbevins

    Starting Out With Vinyl Cutting

    What the hobby cutters can't do is load a roll of vinyl. That for me is a face palm. Rolls are cheaper per foot. The are far easier to manage. I can understand wanting to test the waters. But it is a poor test wadding in the kiddie pool. You just get your ankles wet. If you truly want to start small, at least make a 24" your initial jump point. Then you can load a roll. But, if you are just really doing this as a hobby, making small items, scrap book cuts, ect., maybe it is ok. If you want to make things in inches thats fine, if you are thinking in feet, get one that can do feet of material. It is not so much the width of the roll, but that it is a cutter that can take a roll can cut 2-4 in lenght times its width. So for a 24" cutter that is 4-8 feet, (maybe better if it tracks well.) A hobby cutter can only go the length of the sheet.
  6. dcbevins

    inkscape to signblazer problem

    Have you tried Postscript level 2 and 3? If so and no luck can you post the svg and the resulting eps? Can you take an eps from the old machine, transfer it to the new machine and see if SignBlazer opens it just to make sure it is not a SB problem on the new PC.
  7. dcbevins

    REMOVABLE VINYL ON BANNERS???

    What I used to do to change dates on say a yearly banner was just to slap some white vinyl over the date, and then a new date on top. Would fix typo's that way too.
  8. dcbevins

    Software help

    Traditional, cutting software cut. You feed it a design. It cut it out. Lately, cutting software has been attempting to double as design software. Signcut Pro1 had no design options. Signcut Pro2 does, but I find them suboptimal. Consider using dedicated vector design software to make your designs. It is designed for design. Free would be Inkscape, Gravit, or maybe Figma, (haven't tried that yet.) Commercial would be Illustrator, CorelDraw, Affinity Design, (with Affinity Design being very cheap.) Cutters require vector graphics. Vector graphics are not, and may never be push button easy. It takes some time, but not as much as initial frustration might suggest. Give Inkscape a try. It certainly is better than Signcut Pro2's design options and is free. You make the design in Inkscape. Export it. Import into SCP. There is also a plugin for Inkscape that puts an option in the Extensions menu to send your design directly to SignCut. For free software it has plenty of horsepower. As to file format, Signcut has a native file format you probably want to use. However saving as any vector format is probably good enough, svg, eps, ai, pdf, ps and others.
  9. dcbevins

    Help Please!

    You might have opacity set to zero, but I am thinking you have just set the stroke color to none or "no fill." Right click on a color on the palate bar and pick stroke or Shift+Click a color to set the stroke color. You might have also set stroke width to zero. Change it to something non zero if this is the case, (I like using 1pt most of the time.)
  10. dcbevins

    CorelDraw 2019 (Mac?)

    Digging more into this, the Mac version is not one to one to the Windows version. I don't know what is missing. It appears much of the customizable workspace of the Windows version isn't on the Mac version. One person on the Draw forums called it a "play" version, which would be unfortunate. The version at https://coreldraw.app does appear to be Gravit based and just takes a web browser to run it. I don't know its capabilities, but know some of Gravit's. It appears to be able to save to CDR, Draw's native format, but I don't know if it can open it. It is being provide with 2019, and as far as I can tell requires you to have 2019 license, (full or trial.) It is being promoted as an out of the office app or a collaboration tool. Something to use in addition to Draw, not a replacement. I allows saving to the cloud, for what that is worth. I will get around to it in a few days and see what is up.
  11. dcbevins

    CorelDraw 2019 (Mac?)

    A guy on the Draw forums answered me.
  12. dcbevins

    CorelDraw 2019 (Mac?)

    CorelDraw 2019 is out. Still can't find a way to upgrade with my subscription. Took them a month last time to get out instructions. This time, they claim to have a Mac version. I can't imagine they ported that easily. I am guessing the Mac versions but be much different than the Windows version. It might be based on Gravit as they bought them recently. I was wondering if anyone with a Mac has tried the trial. On the Mac trial download page they state under what is included: Main Applications CorelDRAW® 2019 – Vector illustration and page layout Corel PHOTO-PAINT® 2019 – Image editing Corel Font Manager™ 2019 – Font Exploration and management tool PowerTRACE™ 2019 – Bitmap-to-vector tracing (included as part of CorelDRAW 2019 application) Connect Content – Content finder (included as part of CorelDRAW 2019 application) CorelDRAW.app™ – online graphic design via web browser AfterShot™ 3 HDR* – RAW photo editor BenVISTA PhotoZoom Pro 4* – Plug-in for enlarging digital images They can't, (I think,) have ported all that. Maybe they did. So anybody know whats up? I just wan't to informed enough to explain to a Mac user in the future.
  13. dcbevins

    Number outlines

    One of the features of CoreDraw that I love is their contour tool, both the regular and the interactive one. You set the steps, the width, hit apply then break apart. It is better than other tools I have seen for this particular chore. I know your asking about VM but if you do this often, it's worth a thought.
  14. dcbevins

    looking for tips and tricks on this vector

    When you said family member, I don't think copyright is a problem. I Agree with WildGoose that the trace result isn't bad. One way that might allow you to fine tune the results, but might take some effort is to get some tracing paper, a dark pen or marker, and trace it manually by hand. A lightbox helps. Scan that and try the auto trace again. When you are tracing by hand with the marker, only trace the outlines of the shapes, skipping any shading or hashing. This might in the end leave you with something easier to correct.
  15. dcbevins

    Questions!!

    Inkscape has some support for CMYK, (none for spot colors.) But it is buggy, (some ICC profiles won't work correctly.) Worse, even if it were not buggy, the color profile can't be sent to anything most printers and print shops can deal with, like PDF. It can produce a color managed svg, but who knows what to do with a color managed svg? The common open source solution is to make the svg, bring it into Scribus, and produce a color managed PDF from Scribus. No fix likely to be coming soon. 1.0 alpha doesn't address it.