Identification tags / text labels for Artworks in illustrator

[whatsinaname]

We have thousands of artworks for our sticker cutting business and would like to tag them with their unique names and also put in a big text label for each of them like Artwork 1, Artwork 2 etc so that we can identify them even when we have hundreds of them together in a single cut file by just looking at their names. But since these are there just for identification, these text names should not be selected when the artworks are sent to the cutting machine. I am attaching an example image.

Any possibility of doing this in Adobe Illustrator?

 

[shoresigns]

I can think of four ways you might be able to do this.

1. How's your coding ability? Illustrator supports scripting in Javascript, AppleScript and VB Script. A script would be the most natural way to solve this sort of a problem. Learn more at https://www.adobe.com/devnet/illustrator/scripting.html
2. When you export each artwork to PDF, prior to nesting them all, go to Marks and Bleeds > enable Page Information. This adds text outside the trim area that displays: <Filename> <Page No.> <Date> <Time> in 6 pt Courier. Put the information you need into the filename for each artwork, then it'll be there when you import all your PDFs into one document for nesting. The downside of this is you cannot customize the font size or the information you get in the label.
3. Do your nesting in the RIP instead of in Illustrator. Your RIP might have a feature that allows you to print labels below each artwork. We run VersaWorks here, and we can add labels including the filename, the print settings, and any custom text.
4. Do your nesting in InDesign instead of Illustrator and use Captions. You can lay out a bunch of artworks in various sizes and then select them all and generate captions below them with many different variables including filename, page number, dimensions, etc.

 

[Solventinkjet]

I would put the cut line in one layer and the label in another. Then just turn off the label layer before cutting. Or if your cutting software allows it, just make the labels a different color and then turn that color off in the software before cutting.

 

[untitled]

I'm not sure which software/cutter you are using but I know with Illustrator if you don't expand the text and you send it to a Roland CutStudio it doesn't send the the text. It will only send the what has been expanded.

The other option is when you create the label and expand it, make it guide and then when you select everything it doesn't send the whatever is considered a guide. Again this would be for Illustrator.

The easiest way I would think would be to have the label on a separate layer that you can lock or hide when cutting.

 

[jfiscus]

You could probably use a setting in the layer options to make it not printable. But, then you wouldn't be able to print it out for reference either.

 

[shoresigns]

I didn't really address the part of the question that mentioned ensuring the labels don't cut. I would assume that you use a special spot colour to tell the plotter which parts to cut? I thought it went without saying that you wouldn't use that spot colour for the text labels.

 

[whatsinaname]

You could probably use a setting in the layer options to make it not printable. But, then you wouldn't be able to print it out for reference either.

This was the first thing that I tried but locking a layer for printing doesn't help. It still goes for cutting..

 

[whatsinaname]

I would put the cut line in one layer and the label in another. Then just turn off the label layer before cutting. Or if your cutting software allows it, just make the labels a different color and then turn that color off in the software before cutting.

Yup, this is the only option that's gonna work for now..The image that we uploaded is using this option...Only thing we need to be careful is everytime we cut a job, we have to disable this layer for cutting based on color. If the cutting software remembers the color, then its gonna be fine.

Thanks for the inputs.