dcbevins

If no bitpamp output in SB, export as eps and use Inkscape to render it. It is free. That dimension and dpi is going to be over 80mb. Might have to wait a min or three for it to render.

Never tried Artcut. But if Mz Skeeter says it is junk I am inclined to believe her. However, if it does cut, and just sucks at design, then I might be inclined to keep it and get better design software. I am partial to CorelDraw, but Inkscape is free and does everything you could want for a cutter.

I wasn't aware of what a Cricut Easy Press was. I found a video. It's a big hand iron. I change my opinion, to 1) It's probably the big hand iron not being a conventional press. 2) It still might be something to do with shrinking, but maybe a little of the shrinking and the lack of consistent pressure/heat on your iron.

I will paraphrase the others, and hopefully clarify. Vector file formats can have bitmaps embedded. Thus a vector file can contain non vector components, which obviously your cutter can't deal with. If you have all vectors in your vector file, exporting as a bitmap and then going through the autotrace process again to make vector again is a bad practice. If you have all vectors in the long run you will be much better off using those and not doing the vector to bitmap to vector autotrace dance. Autotrace can fail on an epic scale at times. Best not to count on it and find a better workflow. It might have worked this time, might work the next, but it is foolish to think it will work every time. Maybe in Illustrator you were using some bitmaps and autotrace is the only option. But Illustrator has an autotrace. Why not trace it there and have all true vector before going to VM?

What comes to mind first is the shirts are not pre-shrunk and washing/drying is causing them to shrink. The shirt shrinks but the vinyl doesn't, thus wrinkles. Worse in 100% cotton, but a 50/50 blend can shrink too. Maybe you could find a supplier offering pre-shrunk ones. Pre-shrunk shirts aren't necessarily pre-washed. Some kind of machine is involved in pre-shrinking. You could try pre-washing yourself, but maybe this isn't optimal. Second thing that comes to mind is they got the shirt right from your press quickly and washed them quickly, (the same night.) HTV does better after it has cured for a day or two, the adhesive hardening and sinking into the fibers. Lastly, the brands involved come to mind. What brand of shirt are you using? Some shirt brands are more shrink prone. Thicker HTV while being inferior hand tends to not wrinkle as much. I wonder if normal EZ weed would be better here than EZ weed stretch. Sweaters are not performance material, (for athletic wear,) which EZ weed stretch is meant for.

Life is a game. Money is how we keep score. Ted Turner

Nothing to add about your contour cutting problem but screen shots are really easy. Hit alt+printscreen, goto this website https://onpaste.com, hit ctrl+v, click the "i", get an imgur link. Then there is no distortion problems with taking a camera picture. There are dozens of other utilities too, I like the onpaste one as it produces a shareable link to the screenshot quickly.

What are we meaning by the term nesting here? I take it to mean fitting a number of objects into a given area so as to minimize waste of material, say vinyl. If that is the type of nesting you mean, is everything ungrouped? Will the objects you are trying to nest actually fit in the nesting area?

No vector graphics really has a crop tool. That said, CorelDraw has a crop tool. What I mean is vector graphics lend themselves to boolean operations to change shapes, (path finder in Illustrator, Shaping tool in Draw.) Crop is something you do to raster images, not vector ones. That said, Draw does have a thing that will crop vectors, erasing nodes. It can go sideways at times. It also has PowerClip, which is a more versatile way to do clipping masks than others. It also, unlike say Inkscape will do an actual crop on a bitmap. Draw has several bitmap tools built in. If in Inkscape you set a clip, then do "Make bitmap copy" it is pretty much a crop.

Try saving as .PS then from Inkscape instead of encapsulated post script. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ed6r48p98o9f67p/AAADKJKV87njxIymphRM3Dlea?dl=0

I think it is something with the bounding box size. The bounding box, (page size in Inkscape,) is 2052.00000 x 1234.66675 px. The graphic itself is only 959.988 x 152.049 px. Inkscape has had bugs about eps bounding box size and may still have. https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/380501 . One quote from that bug report " The EPS specification is requires that the bounding box be the smallest rectangle enclosing all marks on the page. The 0.46 behavior was a bug. If your really want the bounding box to be the whole page you can draw a white line (assuming your page color is white) around the page." If I open it in Illustrator CC 2018, it opens, showing the bounding box size, but parts are off canvas if I drag and drop to an open document. Very early versions of Illustrator might not be showing the off canvas areas. I can't remember back to those versions how it handles off canvas or off page areas. It might be clipping part of the drawing. I suspect there is a way to make it show, maybe by increasing the document size. Here I set the page size to the artwork size in Inkscape and exported out of Inkscape. I THINK this will work for your Illustrator version. https://www.dropbox.com/s/ls98ux1418usxsb/NSC 02.eps?dl=0 If it does not work, try saving out of Inkscape as post script, .ps. CorelDraw 2018 didn't have a problem with it. It relies on Ghostscript. MZ SKEETER Inkscape will open eps files. It can use internal code or poppler/cario libraries. It prompts on open or import for the method. It used to rely on Ghostscript, but doesn't in current versions. But your better off always in Inkscape keeping a native file format of Inkscape svg for later editability.

Can you post a link to the eps and or svg in question? First thing that comes to mind is your using a clipping mask which don't go from Inkscape to Illustrator well all the time. In my mind this is when using PDF but might effect eps too. You might also be using a filter effect which Illustrator can't deal with. Might be something else, transparency/alpha/opacity, some gradient or other effect that typical gets rasterized out of Inkscape to eps.

Ok, I got to say it. Windows 3?????????????? Not even Win 3.1. I mean I could almost stand by a diehard on Win XP. Almost. But with Win 3 your shooting yourself in the foot. Bite the bullet. Go 64 bit. The nineties called and ask for their OS back. Your Win3 machine saw OS/2 on a milk cartoon and thought they saw him in the office cubicle at the end of the hall. I understand you got the hang of the software, are happy were you are. But you won't find a single new thing for that computer. Your going to have problems getting any support. The technical support you may encounter probably weren't even alive when Win 3 came out. Networking the machine to any other modern computer is going to be hair pulling. No USB means floppy disks. Sooner or later the Win 3 machine is going to die. Why it hasn't is a miracle, like seeing Jesus on a piece of toast or something. Exchanging or receiving artwork from clients is going to be like climbing mount Everest, backwards, blind folded, and on a tequila bender. If you want to add a scanner, a modem, or anything, your going to have to move jumper settings around on the mother board, maybe the sound card and hope there isn't an IRQ conflict with your serial port. Change means you can lose control. It means you face uncertainty, surprise, difficulty, humiliation, extra work. But it has rewards too. Every day it's a brand new world.

HTV is for fabric. That said, someone always try the non standard. These guys did. https://shopcraftables.com/blog/can-i-iron-htv-on-that/. Though ceramic isn't on their list, I imagine HTV will stick like their results for glass. I wouldn't count on HTV on a mug to last one dishwasher cycle, any brand or type of HTV.. HTV is the wrong product for anything but fabric, (maybe leather like stuff also.) Sublimation is what most go for for mugs, with a mug press. You need the right kind of mug too for sublimation. Regular sign vinyl would have a higher chance of making it through a dishwasher. But I wouldn't count on it lasting forever. If the mug were hand washed, odds improve.

Don't know what that is, but athletic and academic types seem to be happy with a collegiate font. https://www.fontspace.com/category/college

Yeah CMX is an obscure Corel only format. Try saving as eps.

Draw needs GHOSTSCRIPT to open eps. It installs with the program. I doubt they are missing ghostscript as they specifically asked for eps, but who knows. Post a link to a problem eps and we can look at it. I think really really really old versions of Inkscape would save as AI. Current versions don't give that option. That you were able to save as AI suggests you should first try the current stable version of Inkscape, as you are years behind the curve. An old version might not handle eps well. Newer versions internalize their post script handling where older versions I belove relied on ghostscript.

The holy grail of printing, cheap print/cut combo. Still just a myth. That sticker in your picture probably comes from a print/cut machine, not a plain printer. Notice it is cut out. Further, print cut machines almost always, (can't think of a single one that doesn't,) use eco-solvent, solvent or latex inks. Cheapest one of those is about $8,600, (Roland BN-20.) Dakotagrafx ain't lying. There isn't a cheap way to do it yet that gives consistent results. Companies doing them in mass, probably offset print and die-cut. But we are talking 6 or 7 figures there.

Found a text fragment in a very obscure web site. "Windows 2000 may not show PostScript or Adobe PDF import because psih.dll is not loading. In this case GDIplus needs to be installed. That can be found on the DVD by running Util\\Windows 2000 GDIplus\\gdiplus_dnld.exe. The installer will automatically install the missing DLL if it cannot be found on your Windows installation. On launch you must set the path to \\Windows\\System32.\par" Apperatly very old if it is for win2k, but maybe there is a similar thing on your cd.

If your BRAND new to this, I wouldn't recommend it to anybody. It will be extremely difficult to start with understanding the equipment, understanding application techniques and using vector graphics. Knowledge about how the equipment works; weeding techniques and application to substrates with transfer tape/squeegees on varying surfaces and vector graphics not raster graphics are not too difficult if shown, but hard to acquire solo. If you have a local shop, or just a local person that already does this and can show you the ropes for a few days, it will go a long long long long way. Youtube videos can't really give the full monty, just tease you. Even if you have to travel and beg a shop to let you hang around awhile, a night or five in a motel wouldn't hurt. If you have someone that knows the ropes and can come over and get you up and running, that would be idea. But diving into this with zero experience will be grueling.

Inkscape is totally free. Grab a copy.

You are never going to get an autotrace to completely match that. Good enough might be possible. Here I just ran it through Inkscape. Looks hard to weed but not impossible. Though you might could tweak settings to get it better, its not going to be far from this no matter what program you use. Much better would be to redraw by hand, and probably in a different style more suited to vector. stubbys.svg

I think the box is to type a value. If I understand what your asking. The other box(es) might be just for text and not the whole selection. The width height boxes effect everything selected, no matter if its text or other objects.

I'll add the little lock icon locks the aspect ratio so changing width or height with proportionally change the other. Unlock it if you want to go silly putty.

If your new to all this, especially vector graphics, it is all hard to use. Vector graphic programs have more options than a commercial airliner cockpit. I've never used Vinyl Master, but have heard good things about its capabilities. I think they have differing tiers of the program, so the most you can afford. Going with a program that drives the vinyl cutter and does design all in one is one route, like Vinyl Master. The other route is to go with one program to cut, and another dedicated design program for designs. Going with a dedicated program, you learn skills that can be applied to other en-devours in graphic design. Inkscape is free, very capable given it is open source. Adobe products like Illustrator are prevalent to a super majority in industry, so learning them give you transferable skills. They are the most expensive. I use CorelDraw. but it is much smaller following. What ever you go with, it is going to take a great amount of time. You could probably get skilled enough to get things done in 120 hours or so. Intermediate competence in a few months. Mastery takes years.