wg_kjell

What you need is a feature that creates that outline and that is not what can be found in SignCut-X2. Unfortunately I'm not that skilled in how to manage Adobe Illustrator but in CorelDRAW X3 you just select the entities that should be included and then you just makes a special menu-choice and it is solved. Or you can use SignIt-X2 which is a plug-in for CorelDRAW-X3 that is included with SignCut-X2.

Hi, Signcut-X2 is not aimed as an layout software. Actually we entered that simple text feature once as the administration for the Swedish goverment asked us about a simple software for making name signs for the minister offices. So that was quick and dirty job made by an accident. For sofisticated layout tasks we recommend CorelDRAW which is an incredible tool second to none. Adobe Illustrator is another; appreciated of just as many. The cheapest alternative is Inkscape that can be found on the SignCut-X2 CD. It is free of charge and not bad at all. From Inkscape to Signcut-X2, export as EPS files and during the export procecure, set the "Convert text to curves"-option. It is recommended to do that export to a folder named IMPORT situated under the SignCut-X2 folder. As Signcut-X2 has focus, just press the IMPORT-button or the 1-key on your keyboard, to open it. We will never implement layout features into SignCut-X2. That is an old idea, but of those nearly 100 vendors of vinyl cutting softwares who where around 10-15 years ago and who had put layout tools in there softwares, not many survived. For instance it is incredible expensive to make a layout tool just as good as CorelDRAW. It takes many years and I estimate the cost to at least 100.000.000 USD. There is no software company in the vinyl sign cutting industry who are able to afford that or even to maintain such a software. The source code for a small software as SignCut-X2 consist of more that 100.000 rows of text. It took about 45 man-years to get that quality it keeps today and the cost were nearly 3.000.000 USD. I mention this because people use to think that it is easy to create software, but modern computers and OS:es makes a most complex world and as this is software not aimed for costly educated specialists, it has been much worse task to develop it than software aimed for specialists who use to pay for an expensive educations. So these low price softwares has to be much more user friendly than for instance a CAD-software aimed for engineers. And the user friendlyness is actually the most expensive part of the developement. It took us about 18 months of development to implement the basic features in SignCut. The rest of those 45 man-years is a struggle to raise the quality, to keep it compatible with all kind of standards, to find bugs and to improve the user friendlyness. During these 16 years, since the release we have launched more than 1.000 sub-revisions. The result is what get this product to stick out and win market shares all the time. It can be hard to realize that circumstance at a first glanse, but you will be aware about the extreme quality in the long run. SignCut-X2 is what you should be able to realy on, now and in the future, just as our service. When ever you need help, use your web-support account at www.sc-x2.com and we will do our very best to offer quick and efficient help!

Hi, if you have downloaded the 1 week free trial from our webiste, if you want, you can keep that license as you extend the subscription by a Purchase Ticket payment. If you prefer to change license, to use the USCutter license that is pre-loaded with another 1 month free of charge subsrciption, you have to re-install SignCut-X2. During the installation process you becomes able to enter that new license number. However, as you register the new license and once again associate the email-address used for the first license, the user name for that new license will be the emailaddres with a suffix, like my.email@uscutter.com#2. To login to your SignCut-X2 web-account you need the the license number as a password and that username consisting of your emailaddress and that suffix. The sum up will be; if you change to a new license number, you has to add a suffix to your emailaddress to get the user name which is associated to your license. Further, if you buy more than 1 license, that is what you have to keep in mind.

Yes, sp00k is right, the Baudrate has no effect when LPT1: is in use. When connecting to the LPT1:-port, be sure that the standard-cable that followed the plotter is connected directly into the plotter. Do not use any cable extension between that standard cabel and the plotter. What you also should check is that the computer BIOS is set in the ECP-mode. That think that is all that matters for the parallel interface.

Hi, to make a software perfectly intuitive is nearly impossible because as humans we are so different and so are our knowledges. But every day there is nearly 40 new users of SignCut-X2, people coming from all over the world, and it is rare that they meet huge difficulties. And when they get problems we use to solve them together rather quickly. The category with most difficulties are those who used another vinyl cutting software before, because they expect something else and it is hard to think in another way than before. It is really rare that we hear from people that it is hard to learn SignCut-X2, but it is often they say it is easy. However, we are surprised ourself that people are able to find out so much by them self, because in fact this is a most complex task. There are so many aspects, so much to learn about. To the previous SignCut we wrote of thick manual, you can still get it from your web-account. It describes that version in details, but unfortunately just a few people did read it, but we still recommend a read through. However begin with the built in help. Just press the F1-key to get it. Also read through the tutorial that can be found at the web-account as well. And look through the videos. Our intention is to produce much more of that stuff as soon as we are able to. Finally, the first SignCut version were released 1991. Then 13 people had been working for 18 months. Since then we have continuously working hard on making improvements and the base for that work has been the support issues. All the time we have had focus on to reduce the number of support issues. In fact we have released more than 1.000 subrevisions and major revisions during those 16 years. We still release an average of more than 1 subrevision per month. As a result the number of support issues are very low today and that is an important reason to why we can sell our software at such a low price. But on the other hand, we can't give it away, because we want to be able to keep on the improvement work and to give quick help when you need it and to keep the software perfectly up to date and to afford making videos that teaches how to utilize SignCut-X2 efficiently. Because, to be honest, when we meet users at their works, it is common that we are able to inform about many useful abilities that they had no clue about that is available, this often despite many years of use. I can assure all of you that there are many horsepowers under the hod that takes studies in the manuals to utilize. Some of them took us years to realize how to implement, so it is not that easy to make them intuitive. And despite they can be useful in daily work, people rarely ask about them, because they do not expect to find them there and it is not often they have the time to dive deeper in to the software. At least that is the impression we have. So we really hope that we will get the time during this year to make more videos that really shows more of all that power you already have at your fingertips.

The new machines also have that USB-port and there is a technical problem with that, unfortunately. The vendor reccomend the use of 4800 Baud when using that connection and that is what we have found as well as nessesary. That setting must be done in both the plotter and in Signcut-X2. A drawback with that is that the plotter does not remember that setting, so next time, if you forget to make that setting, you will get a communication problem. So I wiould like to recommend the use of the RS232-port instead, that works great. If your computer lacks that port, then I suggest that you buy a USB to serial adapter instead! Try to find an adapter with the FTDI-cheap set, for instance they already have drivers for Windows VISTA. With such an adapter you can use the standard settings for the communications, such as Baud-rate 9600.

For those who don't want to spend their money on CorelDRAW X3 or Adobe Illustrtor we recommend InkScape, which have a real good vecotrization and it is a freeware. The CorelDRAW X3 vectorization is also impressing! We did not develop a layout tool becasue a majority of users prefer to work in what is state of the art layout tools as those mentioned. It is also convininet to use standard tools as you are not locked in and you can easily share documents with others, such as your customers. So instead we developed what likely is the most powerful, reliable and easy to use software that can be found. As a result you become able to work efficiently and all of this is offered at the most resonable cost that can be found. But the tast differs and it is well known that what you are familiar with is what use to be most appreciated. And we know from many years of experience that those who are used to something else, no matter which other software, has a more difficult task to learn SignCut-X2 then those who never before seen it. The reason is that things are expected to work in a way and in SignCut you might not find that feature at all, because the system takes care of a lot of things that you not have to bother about. To begin with such circumstanses seams to create confusion. But back to the main issue. The vectorization offered int SignCut-X2 creates perfect results as the orignals are perfect, else the result can be very poor. But normally you should import vector images and we reecommend the use of the AI-format. If you recieve a bitmap-image from a customer you should vectorize and edit it in another software.

Hi MrKaine, You report two problems but both of them are symptom's from the same cause. This has to do with that the plotter reference system does not accord to that setting in SignCut-X2. You will find that setting in the plotter dialog, it is simply named "Rotate". The setting should either be zero or 90. Above the working area in SC you have the Control Panel which is splitted up of a number of smaller panels, the image panel, the measurement panel, the tiling panel and the plotter panel. Always set the vinyl width in the plotter panel. To confirm a setting, press ENTER or TAB. If you use to have a standard width for the vinyl, then make to a habit to press the "Create Tiles" button instead. It is recommended to do that as soon as you have opened a new image. If the image is split up as you describes, that should be seen on the screen because there should be blue dashed lines that illustrates eventual tiles. Tiles could be implemented automatically as you have experienced but you can also insert them manually or adjust those that were automatically created. To learn more about this, open your personal web-account on http://www.sc-x2.com by clicking "Customer login". Under the menu Manuals you will find a tutorial. There is also a built in help. To get it press F1. Good luck! After writing this I took a look at the SignForums.com where Kimon had answered the same topic. But a fact is that his explanation was another and most likely he is right. What has to be done is simply to rotate the image in SignCut-X2. There is a main-tool for rotation. It is situated at the left side of the working area. As it is clicked a number of sub-tools appears below. One of those is for rotating 90 degrees per click. However that is done quicker by just toggling the TAB-key without the need to choose the main tool for rotation. By the way, Kimon illustrated the rotation tools with the help of a video he made, that was brilliant. Take a look you too!

In this case it is likely that the file consisted of an image in a bitmap format. Such files are vectorized as they are opened and that is likely what have caused the jagged contour line. If that is the reason you should see those jagged contours also as you zoom in the image in SignCut-X2. Use a vector format instead and be sure that the image is built up of vector lines and not a raster. Another detail, text should be converted to curves, which use to be an export setting, at least it is softwares as CorelDRAW and Incskape, but in Illustrator that has to be done manually before export (but not if you have CS2 and uses the file transfer method offered by SignCut-X2). By the way, to get the text editable again in Illustrator CS and earlier versions, you can choose Undo after export. It is recommended to export files for SignCut-X2 in an older AI-format for instance version 8, but also the latest are supported, except the CS2 AI-format as it is compressed. Exporting from Inscape and CorelDRAW versions older that 7.0 are exceptions. For those use the EPS format instead. There may be another reason for what you have experienced. If the image looks good as you zoom it in and the jagged result just is seen after cut out, then most likely the setting for knife offset is wrong. That parameter value depends upon the knife in use. Eventually your plotter calculate compensation itself. If that is the case (not Refine) than the Knife offset compensation value should be set to zero in SignCut-X2. You will find this setting in the Cut out dialog. Finally, if the plotter is old and the knife holder is in bad condition, this is what can occur as well, but that is not what you have met in this case. With all conditions and settings correct you should not see any of this. Instead the result should be very good. For instance I have seen 3 mm high letters that were accurately cut out with a Copam plotter that was controlled of SignCut. Actually it was the German dealer of Copam plotters who tested the knife offset compensation feature in SignCut-X2 and he were really surprised when he saw the result. Tip! To weed such small things, transfer the whole thing and apply it to the sign surface before weeding. Eventually use the "Cutting of small text" feature that is found under the menu "Special cutting". As it is used, inner objects are cut first. The vinyl will be pre-feed to let you weed away those thin inner objects before the other paths are cut. Also put a weeding line at the middle along the text and you will be able to handle it rather conveniently despite the small size.