Aaaaaaaaargh!!! Carved a sign wrong!! (I hate Flexi)

[signmeup]

A real craftsman wouldn't have screwed it up in the first plce. A duchman is what we do to fix the mistakes of an apprentice. (I whudda blamed this on my apprentice.....'ceptin' I don't have one.)

 

[Gene@mpls]

Gotta think that it is a stretch blaming this on Flexi if you didn't use one
of their import filters. Most errors here are operator errors.

 

[skyhigh]

What a shame.... I can feel your pain.

I've only tried an inlay a few times, with mixed results. 1 good, 1 bad & 1 accecptable (when your talking a carved sign, "accecptable" is never accecptable...haha). If the inlay dosen't work out, would it be possible to add a raised panel?

 

[Just Another Sign Guy]

is the substrate thick enough and the lettering shallow enough that you can mill it down and reroute? i know you are not looking for a solution..but just want to make sure the option was not overlooked.

 

[signmeup]

Gotta think that it is a stretch blaming this on Flexi if you didn't use one
of their import filters. Most errors here are operator errors.

It's not flexi's fault. It's all my fault. I just hate that it won't accept a paste without f'ing up my fonts that loaded on the same machine. Every once in a while I get caught like this.

 

[signmeup]

is the substrate thick enough and the lettering shallow enough that you can mill it down and reroute? i know you are not looking for a solution..but just want to make sure the option was not overlooked.

No. (re-route? what's that? This is hand did...with chisels and $hit.)
I think what I will do is cut out the bad section the entire thickness of the panel make a 1" thick patch to recarve. This way will be less work than getting the depth of the hole and thickess of the patch just right. I can push the pre-painted patch up till it's exactly flush with the front surface. Being pre-painted should solve the problem of sanding the patch to be flush. That is always the hard part of repairing HDU.

 

[SignManiac]

Easy Fix!!!

 

[J Hill Designs]

 

[Just Another Sign Guy]

i have on multiple accounts had to resurface hdu and then reroute, usually the depth of carving is less than 3/4" so depending on the thickness of the substrate you can sometimes you can save yourself from having to purchase a new sheet..just a suggestion or a solution to file away between your ears for future use.

your solution should work fine and i have done the same thing a few times. depending on the final finishing of the sign you won't even notice it...besides NO ONE looks at a sign as close as we do.

i'd wish you luck, but i know you are so good at what you do that you don't need no stinking luck.

 

[signgal]

Easy Fix!!!

ROFL I just fell off my exercise ball when I saw that one!

 

[Marlene]

A real craftsman wouldn't have screwed it up in the first plce.

you are a true craftsman and screw ups happen because we are human. your work is always a joy to see, even when you mess up, it still looks 100% better than most signs out there!

 

[signmeup]

Signmaniac.....that's some funny chit! bob was right as usual! Thanks for posting that up....it does make a person feel a little better about screwing up when you can laugh it off.

 

[James Burke]

This got me to thinking and I've been tinkering with copy / paste in Illustrator and SignLab 8.

Copying text from SL and pasting into to Illy results in perfect results automatically converted to (ungrouped) curves...absolutely no problems. Very handy, indeed.

Copying text from Illy and pasting into SL causes a major crash for some reason...even with painfully simple text.

Exporting AI files to .dxf files first, usually renders perfect results when importing to SL, depending on how the original artwork was prepared.

JB

 

[GAC05]

Tough break on the sign.
People keep saying they get good results using copy-n- paste from Corel into Flexi, but I don't think it is a good idea.

Example - S converted to curves in Corel - 43 nodes
Copy/paste from corel to flexi - 387 nodes
Export from Corel as .ai(v3) Import into flexi - 43 nodes.
Which one has a greater chance of screwing up during printing, plotting or routing....

wayne k
guam usa

 

[signmeup]

I'll be darned. Wayne you may have something there. I get the same result you did when I save as a cmx....hardly ant nodes. when I copy paste....tons of nodes. I'll see what happens when I send it to the plotter.

Seems to cut the same. I couldn't tell any difference. My troubles were that I didn't convert to curves and when I exported to cmx I sent a font along with the same word converted to curves. It came through with the font screwwy and the curves just fine. Interestingly Flexi was unable to locate the font I just typed out in Corel and attempted to substitute arial for Baskerville bold. I chose Baskerville from the drop down choices provided and it opened with the font I started with. It appears flexi is unable to locate all the fonts on my system. The cut and paste operation discards kerning and also reverts to standard weight from bold. Any ideas what that is about? If it didn't do that all would be right with my prefered, lazy import method.

 

[Fitch]

Wayne is right... I ALWAYS export as a CMX into Flexi and cuts right everytime. BUT I also do a sample of CMX, DXF, and EPS just to see the minute differences.

 

[signmeup]

I've done the copy paste thing for the past 5 years with no trouble except for when I forget to convert to curves. I get the same error with fonts if I forget to convert to curves when I save as cmx though so I see no advantage to the extra steps.

 

[GAC05]

I think everything gets converted to short polylines when it is sent to the plotter but I would rather have the dedicated sign app do the conversion instead of the windows clipboard.
I'm thinking with that many stacked points - the chances of stray points out of place or disconnected or Flexi choking on a complex file with a lot of converted text has to be an issue.
I've noticed that without converting to curves Flexi will import the text but change out the formatting to the Flexi default - so even the font changes at times.
One other advantage is you have an ai/eps copy of your file that can be read in most any vector program - unlike the .fs or .cdr that are proprietary.

I just don't like all those extra points so I use copy n paste for building up the files within Corel - before export.

wayne k
guam usa

 

[signmeup]

So why does flexi change things to the flexi default? Can this be changed with some hidden checkbox?