LMG0822

Vinyl decal question - please help

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I will start off by saying I haven't had my vinyl machine but a month or so - and I'm having to teach my self how to use it as I go...

 

I'm trying to make some car decals for a ball team. I am having more trouble with this than I anticipated - and i'm probably making things more difficult that necessary.  I have attached a sample of the type of decal I'm trying to make...  They just want a white oval with "DRAW" centered in the middle and Bad Draw smaller, along a black oval outline (smaller than the white oval)  I feel like this should be fairly simple to make...but I must be over complicating things.  I made the white oval, but I'm having trouble getting the smaller outline of an oval in black to be exactly proportionate.  And I understand that it will have to be 2 cuts for the black oval (one on each side of the outline) but I am not exactly sure how to go about making them.

 

(I was able to figure out how to make "Bad Draw"  follow a path to curve in the direction of the oval)

 

Also, Would you suggest making the white oval with nothing cut out of it and then just adding the black vinyl over it after that has been cut, or would you suggest cutting out all of the images out of the white so that I can fit the two colors together.  

 

I hope this wasn't too confusing - I'm very appreciative of any help/advice

 

Thanks in Advance! 

post-35599-0-28767900-1376545347_thumb.g

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I posted the question in more than one area, because last time I had a question - I posted it in one place and it was suggested to me to post it in more than one.  (because it would lead to more people seeing it and possibly being able to get help faster)  I was suggested that on this site - therefore, I didn't realize it would a problem or offend you as much as it apparently did...since you had to comment on each post.

 

But, none the less, thanks :)

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read all of your old threads can't find who said that . . . which one of us was it - come on fess up whoever it is  :ph34r: 

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Dakotagrafx,

 

Im not sure exactly what you are trying to prove.  You have made your point...let's move on. 


In one of my other "spam" posts you replied  "sorry to be grumpy - maybe just too busy right now." yet you have time/desire/energy to look through my previous post.  Being that you are an advanced member....where I am a wee newbie...I'm sure that you are aware if you click on someone's name you can  send them a direct message...I have also contacted USCutter when I had a troubleshooting question.  When I was first trying to decide which machine to buy someone from the forum (that I will allow to remain annom.  since you for whatever reason are so invested in my post(s) ) was very kind and helpful to me...and gave me some advice and pointers.  Just because you didn't see it on the actual forum, doesn't mean that it didn't happen.

Thanks for your concern, but I have been able to fix my problem.  I am very thankful to you and everyone else that gave suggestions.  I hope your day gets better and your schedule eases up a bit...or whatever it takes for you to not be so "grumpy" (your words, not mine)  Again, I didn't realize that me asking in 3 places would be such an issue.  I now completely understand...and rest assured....asking a question in the forum will be my last option from now on.  And if I do in deed have another question arise that I must ask...I promise I will only ask once.  Can this please be left alone now...

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I just ordered my vinyl machine a couple of weeks ago, but have had sublimation and heat press machines for a couple of years. I found that it was easier to make a decal like that in other programs besides SCAL.  If you plan to try to sell decals I would suggest purchasing design software that is more advanced so that you have more options. 

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I just ordered my vinyl machine a couple of weeks ago, but have had sublimation and heat press machines for a couple of years. I found that it was easier to make a decal like that in other programs besides SCAL.  If you plan to try to sell decals I would suggest purchasing design software that is more advanced so that you have more options. 

I agree. SCALP works fine for cutting but the design side is a little tough to work with. When it first came out I played with it a little to see how it felt and thought it was fairly easy, then I actually tried to build a file in in one day on a lark and found out it was not. I am a dedicated Illustrator guy and have always felt that Inkscape was clunky and counter-intuitive but Inkscape is definitely heads above SCALP for design. (AND FREE)

 

If you have the coin and time to learn the program, Illustrator is the boss. It is real complicated until you learn it then it is absurdly simple and you look back wondering what seemed so hard. Like driving with a clutch. 

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I don't know why nobody shows some love for Corel Draw. Just like Illistrator once you learn it it is a great program to work with, one thing for scalp is it's trace function as it does a better job than any program I've tried.

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"Illustrator" is the app to use if a) you have a Mac, B) you have too much money, c) you're a college student with cheap access to a Mac and/or Adobe software or d) a hipster.

 

I have CorelDraw X6 and Illustrator CS5.5 and I honestly almost never use Illustrator - especially since I updated my CorelDraw to X6 and it handles .AI imports better, so I don't need to open them in Illustrator and export it as .EPS first.

 

I don't like the fact that Adobe makes up their own terms for functions and I've never liked their user interface.  I'm sure that if you use it regularly it all starts to make sense, but I can find things much quicker in most apps than I can ever find them (assuming I can find them) in an Adobe app.

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I have Both illustrator and CorelDraw x6. Only time ive opened illustrator is when double clicking on a file and it opened it. I use Corel for all my designing since I got it

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Feelin' the love... Never had A.I. and never wanted it. I'd feel like I was cheatin' on Corel.

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the design side of flexi I believe is licensed from corel so that is why we feel more comfortable/familiar with it

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I have to agree Scott because as soon as I got Flexi starter everything just seemed "right" when I started using it.

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Hey don't get me wrong, I have never used corel or flexi and they are probably both fine products. IMHO anyone doing simple vinyl work (as appossed to digital print) is building real simple graphic art anyway so just about any vector program is going to get you there and with practice and familarity I don't think it matters which program you want to use. Illustrators biggest problem for most newbies is that is is huge which overwhelms your brain and the program doesn't assume anything so you have to dial in most of the functions to fit what you are doing. Kind of like having a fancy camera that needs to be ran in the manual setting. Amatures can't get a good picture because it has very few auto settings but pros can do things with near perfect results. I didn't go to college to learn to use it but I took a college level online course that took over three months of evenings to get through. Lot of commitment but now its easy. My business actually started out as a vector file conversion thing and then morphed into vinyl work once I realized I could cut the stuff I had been doing if I bought a cutter.

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All I know is for an old codger like me it gets awful confusing trying to follow a thread on subsequent visits when it is posted at multiple locations.

 

My first true luv for traces was VectorMagic while still in development stage and free online. 

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Goose, I don't think there anything wrong with A.I. just seems like nobody considers the other options out there and I can tell you right now anything you can come up with in A.I. can be done in corel it just takes different steps. Scott (Dakota) sent me a link to a Corel master a while back and I can't find it right now but it should prove w/o a doubt it is not the program but the skill and knowledge of the operator with that program that produces results. Personally I've been thinking about some online study for Corel because I know I have bately scratched the surface of what it can do.

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Goose, I don't think there anything wrong with A.I. just seems like nobody considers the other options out there and I can tell you right now anything you can come up with in A.I. can be done in corel it just takes different steps. Scott (Dakota) sent me a link to a Corel master a while back and I can't find it right now but it should prove w/o a doubt it is not the program but the skill and knowledge of the operator with that program that produces results. Personally I've been thinking about some online study for Corel because I know I have bately scratched the surface of what it can do.

 I draw on a mac so that pretty much settles the question for me right there. I would be surprised if there is anything that one can do that the other can't. Different steps to get there maybe and sometimes that makes one easier than the other. There are things I don't like about illustrator. If you are working on a REALLY small graphic there is abuilt in logorithim that tries to align things to the pixel grid on the screen and makes it impossible to get the nodes to go where they should. No way around it and it pises me off. I end up resizing to a bigger size to get things to line up. The nodes can occasionally be hard to grab and you have to zoom in a bit and try again. stuff like that. Really hard to learn at first unless you are someone who has already learned photoshop. I bought the program and expected to be able to just start working with it but couldn't. I think it may boil down to getting used to what you want to run and stick with it to save your sanity.

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