How do you.....

[stuart@accupress.com]

I have a graphic eps for Illustrator from a Clip Art book. It is a black rectangle with a black stroke. Also there is a white box in front with a black stroke. When I cut this I get all kinds of lines in the cut for the boxes and strokes. It's driving me crazy. I have been printing the image and scanning it then running through streamline for a one piece file that doesn't have as many cuts. Is there an easier way. Sorry if this is a newby question but I am a newby.

Stu

[cdsgraphic]

Maybe post the file so we can see it...

the only thing I can think of, of the top of my head, is you say the object are stroked. strokes don't cut, they aren't actual vectors unless you can covert them to outlines.

[Idea Design]

I cut directly from inside Illy 10. Always before I send to my plotter, I make sure to look at the actual vectors using the preview mode (ctrl-y).

This helps to find erroneous vectors cause by offsets, strokes, and general things that are not always expected.

[Bill Modzel]

Stu,
Before you cut anything take a look at it in outline mode. View>outline or command(control)Y. What you see there is what will cut no matter what it looks like in Preview.

If I understand your graphic correctly. Select all, go to Object>Path>Outline Stroke. That should give you vector lines around the strokes. Select all again. Make sure your Pathfinder pallet is up, Option-click on the bottom row, third from the left. That is the merge command and should take care of your problem.

[Idea Design]

Bill's right.

I was in outline mode when I was looking for the name of the mode.

I said "preview mode" and I meant "outline mode".

Sorry about that.