tomk

Workflow questions

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Hey All,

Today, we use Flexi for all of our sign and decal designs and for production manager, which we print to HP Latex and cut on Summa and Graphtec plotters.  

My wife is wanting to learn Adobe Illustrator to start making stickers.  How would the workflow change if she created things in Illustrator and we wanted to print and cut to the HP's and Summa plotter?  Can Illustrator send to Flexi for rip and cut?

Such a basic question I know, but having never used Illustrator I'm trying to figure out the easiest workflow here and what else we would need to have her stickers print and cut on the wide format equipment we already have.

Thanks in advance!

 

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That might be the most trouble free way for you to go. Just curious why change from flexi for stickers? Is it a lower level of flexi without all the bells and whistles? I have never had the opportunity to really pay with a full version of Flexi to see the capabilities.  I don't know if you would loose anything in the process of sending through flexi or not. Is your RIP software specific from Flexi or from the HP?

 

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16 hours ago, Wildgoose said:

That might be the most trouble free way for you to go. Just curious why change from flexi for stickers? Is it a lower level of flexi without all the bells and whistles? I have never had the opportunity to really pay with a full version of Flexi to see the capabilities.  I don't know if you would loose anything in the process of sending through flexi or not. Is your RIP software specific from Flexi or from the HP?

 

Thanks for the reply @Wildgoose.  It is the full blown Flexi, and same for the design stations.  The main issue is flexi isn't good at handling textures and patterns, plus the software is just flat out buggy.  At least the newest release is.  On the Flexi facebook group there are many of us having 4 to 12 crashes a day.

Illustrator can handle the patterns, textures, layers, etc so much better than flexi, and for what she is doing that will work out better using another tool like Illustrator.  Just not sure how to go from designing in Illustrator to rip'ing/printing and cutting on our other equipment.

 

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Gotcha. Makes sense. I have yet to get a printer but am still trying to justify one some day. The one I have been considering is a Summa thermal printer and my salesman tells me it comes with it's own RIP software that will evidently plug-in to AI or there is some sort of interface compatible with AI. Is your RIP printer specific or Flexi specific. This is all over my head btw.

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We use illustrator for the same reasons, Flexi is just buggy.  A note of warning however, if you use textures/effects/shadows etc... flexi doesn't like them or doesn't always understand them.  Due to this, anytime we design with effects in illustrator we convert to hi-res jpg or tiff as our print files.  This cuts down on flexi RIP issues.  import your files into photoshop and raster them from there.  Then import to Flexi.  It sounds like more work but in the end your prints look better.

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5 hours ago, FrznFire07 said:

We use illustrator for the same reasons, Flexi is just buggy.  A note of warning however, if you use textures/effects/shadows etc... flexi doesn't like them or doesn't always understand them.  Due to this, anytime we design with effects in illustrator we convert to hi-res jpg or tiff as our print files.  This cuts down on flexi RIP issues.  import your files into photoshop and raster them from there.  Then import to Flexi.  It sounds like more work but in the end your prints look better.

So you design in Illustrator, and bring it into Flexi for rip/print/cut functionality?  No way to go from Illustrator to rip/print/cut?

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not that we have found, unless you buy a better RIP. I believe ONYX will do it, but it's really expensive.  

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