Dumb plotter or dumb me?

[deegrafix]

I have a converted CJ500 running ColorChoice and I use it as much for plotting as printing. There doesn't seem to be any way to "sequence" plot with this thing. Today for example I cut a 140" long section with 4 lines of copy in reflective. It will cut the outside of an A then run all the way to the other end of 140" and cut a letter, then back to the beginning, then the middle, then do the inside of the 1st letter, run to the back again, on and on. Luckily it seems to do ok but all that traveling for no reason is just not neccesary and makes me nervous!

Even my old 25 yr old SM4B knows how to sequence plot, and always cuts one line at a time, letter by letter and word by word in order....

I can't find any way to stop this insanity. Any ideas?

 

[MikeD]

sometimes if your equipment wont sort your data, you can sort it when you design it.
Some of ours don't sort, so we take that into account when making the cut paths; we draw in the order we want to cut.
Sometimes text cuts in a strange order like you described. If there isn't a whole bunch of text, we will convert it to outlines and paste each letter into a duplicate doc in the order that we want it to cut.
In Illustrator, you can create a duplicate doc, and cntrl+c from the original and cntrl+f into the duplicate and that helps maintain x&y values.
Not a good work-a-round if you have lots of type though.

Hopefully that helps you out a little!

 

[J Hill Designs]

do you have omega by chance?

 

[deegrafix]

The cut file was exported as eps from a plt out of Gerber Grafix Advantage into Illustrator. Since GA is an old legacy program, (like the CJ500 is a legacy device), my thinking is that the letters are treated as shapes. They are not grouped when they come in, even though they are grouped as plt.

The workaround may be worth it for the long runs...