dcbevins

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Everything posted by dcbevins

  1. dcbevins

    Question about dimensions.

    https://vehicle-templates-unleashed.com has some free vehicle templates if you sign up. I only saw 2010 F250's and later. I THINK these are to scale, but not completely sure. Often these templates are 1:20 scale. If you have a later version of CorelDraw, they have several vehicle templates you can find via Connect. My search didn't find a F250. But I still thought I'd mention it just for others that might not know Draw has those included. http://signshophelper.com lists some F250's, but they are about twenty bucks. Not too bad I suppose. If you go with a photo, make sure who ever takes it puts a level yard stick or something you can gauge scale by into the photo.
  2. Just remember the SignCut trial is limited to a small cutting area. I think if you go outside that region, it goes nuts. Can't remember the actual dimensions. When I first looked I your photo's, I thought, "Blade out too far." Looking them some more I'm thinking port or communications problems such as wrong buad rate, wrong or bad cable, wrong cutter model selected in the cutter settings. Testing with other software could help narrowing the issue down, (especially if someone will give you support with that other software.) I'd still triple check the blade depth. Inkscape has a way to send data straight to some cutters. If you go to Extensions>Export>Plot you will see tabs for set up and sending the data to the cutter. It might give you another testing path.
  3. Most people run when a big army with drummers sounding cadences come there way. There can be a lot said for going with the majority. Ah come on Wildgoose, give it the old college try again, like a virgin. Pony up some Draw tutorials. Draw some stuff. Align some stuff. Try the one handed mouse wheel zoom, (god bless the one handed mouse wheel zoom.) Both CD and Inkscape have a node editing, (shape tool,) that is more all in one than Illustrators. The one tool does the job of two, (maybe three,) in Illustrator. This might be the unnatural feeling you are getting. Try the C E T B and P keyboard shortcuts in Draw. Marvel at "Ungroup All." Behold the unslipery zooming. Use strokes that go in or out. Try the Contour tool, both the Interactive and the docker. Break Apart stuff in new ways.
  4. If you already have software that can cut and need design software, Inkscape is plenty powerful, feature rich and free. Adobe Illustrator is what most of the world uses for Vector Graphic Software. Go to an Ad Agency where the salaries are $200k a year, and there all going to be using Adboe. So if you want to march to the same drummer as most of the world, use Illustrator. It will cost you. Me I like CorelDraw. I find it faster at getting things done. It is cheaper than Adboe, but not much. I still use Inkscape time to time. Affinity Designer is a rising star, hard not to notice as it's only fifty bucks. There are others out there, but I'd stick with one of these mentioned starting out. It could be basic Vinyl master is enough to handle your designs. Others would have to say about that. There is no such things as easy in the beginning, there is only hard. Hard becomes easy after practice.
  5. What program came with it? The software you need is cutting software and design software. Some programs are both in one, some not.
  6. dcbevins

    Vinyl quality & Price

    I'll just throw in that I find the Greenstar vinyl very hard to weed. Sorry USCutter.
  7. dcbevins

    Help with this

    I know what I would do in CorelDraw or Inksape, but don't know how that would go in VM. You are getting a white area you don't want. You want one path. You have to take that white area and use it to trim or whatever the term is in the software your using the background. Then there is no white.
  8. dcbevins

    Image Formats. . .convert to SVG?

    CorelDraw does absolutely wonky things with SVG imports. It will lock each object in the svg and then add a hidden attribute to many. You have to unlock and remove the hidden attribute to get at them. Draw has an "ungroup all" option. It's great. It strips a bunch of nested groups clean. But, older versions would freeze the program if you did this on an imported svg.
  9. dcbevins

    Image Formats. . .convert to SVG?

    If you want edit-ability, the native file format always wins. Programs all work better in their native format. Sometimes things can be lost, like groups, transformations, gradients, metadata, layers, ect when exporting. If you just wanted to export to another location so you had better thumbnails, that is fine, disc space is cheap. I would think converting them all and not keeping the native format to be real bad. I keep all artwork I create in its native format. Art work I have found elsewhere I keep most of the time in the format I found it. Converting can cause data loss like I mentioned above. I even keep a back up of my artwork based on revision. A program backs up a time stamped-named file to another location each time I save the file. If I just relied on exports, I would have know way of replicating an earlier stage with reliability. Maybe you just need better thumbnails. Sage Thumbs is a windows program that does ok at adding eps and other thumbnails to windows explorer. I think it requires ghostscript be installed and in order. https://www.cherubicsoft.com/en/projects/sagethumbs If you have CorelDraw, a program called ST Thumbnails Explorer is the best thumbnail viewer I have found. It finds the installed CoreDraw and uses its engine to generate the thumbnails and also uses ghostscript. I said it is the best not in its appearance or function, but best in that it handles almost every vector format. It's just about the only one that makes reliable CDR thumbnails, but handles practically all the ones I've thrown at it, except for maybe a CAD like one or two. Xnview and XnviewMP are two others that do well. XnView is their classic viewer and XnViewMP their updated one. They also make the above SageThumbs. https://www.xnview.com/en/ Ghostscript is need for those for AI EPS and PDF. https://www.ghostscript.com Here is a Windows Explorer screen shot. With SageThumbs installed you can see eps ai svg and other formats just fine.
  10. Did you use autotrace to get your result? If so there are things, (assuming it was Inkscape you used,) one can try to get better results. Reduce the number or scans, don't stack results, convert to greyscale or b/w before hand. A manual trace always does better, (bezier pen.) If you did something like DarkShadow suggested and the stroke became an object somehow, then you might can get around that. You would have to share a link or post a vector file of what you've done to determine. Playing with the color fill does nothing to the path. It is just a visual way to see what is going on.
  11. There is a inkscape extension that can generate puzzles. https://inkscape.org/da/~Neon22/★lasercut-jigsaw. Thing is it doesn't seem to create individual puzzle pieces. It probably could be a starting point with some boolean love. Ecut for CorelDraw as an extensive puzzle generator.
  12. Here is a svg I made, showing it with an interior. https://www.dropbox.com/s/wv1pcmdc0ja1yh3/Untitled-1.svg?dl=0 Use the node edit tool and zoom down and you will see the difference, if this is what is happening. I made that from your posted image and an autotrace.
  13. Posting a link to the file in question would go a long way in understanding what happened. If you export it in a common vector format, more people can look at it, such as svg or pdf. But if it is a VinylMaster file, fewer can look. Nine times out of ten this happens when you have a copy of your vector art, under another. In Inkscape, you could change the view mode to outline, and drag things around. See if anything is grouped together and ungroup it first. If you have two objects grouped together, they will move and in some ways behave as one unless you ungroup. The cutting software will try to cut both. If it was an Inkscape autotrace, Inkscape will often stack autotrace results on top of on another. If you find a duplicate, delete it and carry one. Could be multiple duplicates. When you select an object in Inkscape it will tell you in the status bar if its a group. Not sure how VM handles groups. There are settings in cutting software to double cut, but if this the only one doing, its likely something in the vector art and not the cutter settings. It could also be that you made something, "fat," for lack of a better word. That instead of one path on the perimeter, it is a thin object with its own interior perimeter. When you give it a fill it it should look like the second not the first. If it fills like the second, (here I used red,) then it is good to cut. If it filled like the first, it has a thin interior and that is what will cut, which if thin enough, would seem like a double cut.
  14. dcbevins

    Help with this

    I'm sorry, I don't have VM. I could do this in CorelDraw in a pinch and in Inkscape in a few pinches, but can't say in VM.
  15. dcbevins

    Help with this

    Are you asking how to get the image in the middle with contours, already having the distressed flag or how to make the distressed flag or both?
  16. Slice&Dice is stating something important. This stuff is not push button easy. My experience on here, everybody wants to help. Even with a blunt statement like he made. Most of us have years working on these skills, but many show up wanting an answer in minutes. How do you give that? Short sentences in a forum don't cover things like bezier curves, spiro paths, Bspline paths, 3 point paths, tapered paths, smooth, curved, straight and symmetrical nodes, guidelines, snapping, clones, rotation, duplication with transforms applied, rounded rectangles and triangles, fillet and chamfer, contours, insets and outsets, open paths vs closed paths, manual tracing vs auto-tracing, and a truck load more, many specific to specific applications. It can't be absorbed quickly, unless your Jimmy Neutron or the like. But all of us I bet have been under a deadline and ready or not, something has to be done. Then, you have to just push through, learn just enough and get it done somehow. Before you get it done, your as cranky as toothless man in a rock candy eating contest. Afterwards your jubilant. But don't let cranky interfere with the message here. This stuff goes easier with more preparation and practice. I'm glad you found Inkscape. Its a great program. It and CorelDraw are my current favorites. There is an Inkscape specific chat room on irc you can learn about on their community page. As it's live chat it might work well for you if your stuck on a particular feature.
  17. dcbevins

    htv material help (comparing to screen print)

    I'd rethink the wanting it to look like screen printed part. Vinyl doesn't have a great hand, but they are crisp solid colors. For instance white vinyl on a black shirt just looks great. If you got the right clients that want the metal or glitter/bling looking stuff, hard to do with screen printing. Glitter screen printing ink isn't cheap and doesn't jump out like vinyl. But if you got a crowd into that HTV is a good road to go, (think cheerleader squads.) So for me it isn't about the looks, HTV looks fine. It's about the production. You can't match screen printing production to HTV production. Two hundred shirts screen printed is a job, two hundred shirts done in vinyl is approaching a nightmare. One thing you can leverage with vinyl that you can with HTV is the customization. Much easier to do twenty shirts with twenty different names with HTV than screen printed, which would be twenty screens. Many screen printers won't take orders under twenty. So the small customized orders are something you should be able to compete with. It's practical to do orders of one with HTV, no how no way with screen printing. Easyweed is going to have a semigloss look peeled hot or cold. Sometimes you can hit it again with some parchment or kraft paper to get it more to a matte look. Easyweed stretch is a matte finish and has a better hand and feels about as soft as screen printed, close anyway. Though you may not want to, eventually if you do this often, you will have to try a range of them. Some will send samples. I general stick to Siser, just because I find their results predictably.
  18. The way the bezier tool, or the bezier pen works in may programs, (CorelDraw, Inkscape, Illustrator, Xara, ect.) It is that it is a path you can easily edit. If I am manually tracing something, I "box" it first. That is I don't try to draw the curves around what I am tracing, I just draw a rough outline around it using straight lines. Then, I go back and grap indvidual points and give them curvature. Often this is by changing a line segment from a straight line to a curve and then adjusting the node's handles. This can be done quickly with practice. Drawing with the bezier tool doesn't have to get the trace perfect the first time, not even close. It's power is in how it can be edited. I imagine the polyline tool in VM must be something similar.
  19. Can you not thread the shirt? Then there is no issue. To be clear, you are talking about placing the shirt on the press so the front and back may get heat? A threaded shirt only gets heat on one side. If you can not thread as you have some peculiar press I can't grasp, then you probably want the teflon sheet inside the shirt, between the front and back of the shirt. Teflon sheets will block some of the heat, but not all. If you have to press a shirt that already has a pressed design on it again, say later you want to add more color or rhinestones, you want the teflon sheet there to prevent the vinyl on the shirt melting onto you press. Protecting the platen is the main use for a cover sheet. Other heat transfer methods might have a chance to impart ink or other materials onto the platen, like sublimation, so a sheet protects the platen. A teflon sheet will in some cases cause a more glossy finish on heat transfer vinyl. Some desire this effect. Kraft paper will leave a more matte result.
  20. Ideally you want to thread the shirt onto the press so only one side gets heat at a time. If you can't for some reason, something in the middle of the shirt might help like a teflon sheet.
  21. dcbevins

    Scaling and Artboard Help

    Just as some vector trivia for everyone: Maximum Page Size Illustrator 5.7785 × 5.7785 m CorelDraw 45.72 × 45.72 m Inkscape 1000 × 1000 km Gravit claims to be infinite Xara 2.75 × 2.75 m
  22. dcbevins

    Can't cut imported images

    Vector software is not push button easy. It isn't like bitmap's which people know and love. It takes some great deal of investment of time to acquire proficiency. Don't be surprised that it takes some perseverance. Auto-tracing often, (as in very often,) fails in giving something useful for a vinyl cutter. The sure way to over come this is to manually trace, (re-construct by hand.) This is often the only solution. But specific to your problems, it would be much easier to ofter advice if you gave samples. Can you post links to you AI files on dropbox or someplace?
  23. dcbevins

     Split monograms?

    What software are you using? CorelDraw has a knife tool that can do the job. One could always just use a rectangle to slice half of an object, duplicate twice and do it once for the top half and once for the bottom.
  24. dcbevins

    Issues converting to dxf

    What was it? I've seen issues with units with Inkscape outputting dxf. You general had to change units to pixels or the size would be off. I haven't seen that mess you stumbled upon. What fixed it?
  25. dcbevins

    Design Help

    I don't have SCALP, but the bezier tool is common in most vector applications, though name and function can vary. I think it is called the Draw tool in SCALP. Draw tool starts at 6:47. I used CorelDraw on my sample. Inkscape would do just as well. Looking at that tutorial, the Draw tool in SCALP seems to be a bezier pen of sorts.