Illustrator to CoCut

[sdgenxr]

So I have a couple of designs that I want to cut out, but there are some paths that I deleted in Illustrator but reappear in CoCut. I have had to export my files into an EPS for them to open in CoCut and usually save them as Illustrator 3 or 8 EPS files. One in particular has an arched font that CoCut seems to like to drawn in the radius for the arch. Any ideas what is going on? All the paths looks fine in Illustrator, and I am at a loss here.

Thanks,
John

 

[Bill Modzel]

I'm not sure John but depending on how you did your arch you may have to select the graphic/type and under Object go to expand appearance and see if that works for you.

 

[Fred Weiss]

Later versions of Illustrator seem to want to create duplicate, unfilled layers that are directly beneath the ones you see. I have found two freeware items at Adobe Forums which address the problem.

One is a plugin named SelectMenu.aip which adds additional selection choices to your selection menu. If you choose "Unfilled Paths" you will be able to delete them with no problems in a cut file.

The second one is a Javascript named WR-removeDuplicates which only works in Illustrator 10 or higher. With it, you select all and then execute the script from File > Scripts > WR-removeDuplicates. It will then run and report what it has removed if it has found any duplicate paths.

I have found the script works in some cases and the plugin works in others ... so I usually run both on a suspect file.

I am attaching the two files to this post.

 

[sdgenxr]

Thanks for the tips. I will give them a try when I get home later tonight.

 

[sdgenxr]

I figured it out last night. It turns out that I had some open path's that CoCut closed off. Thanks again for all your help.

 

[Fred Weiss]

Did you find them with the plugin?

 

[sdgenxr]

Once again, your vast knowledge and willingness to help has come through Fred. The plug-in worked wonderfully.
Thanks!

 

[Bobby H]

FWIW, Macromedia Freehand exhibits some of the same kinds of problems in duplicating paths for a variety of operations. I haven't seen the Illustrator style duplicate layer thing, but you will still get duplicates on some tasks.

For example, I like to use Freehand for creating outline paths around letters or other outlining effects. IMHO, Freehand is more accurate at doing this than CorelDRAW or Illustrator. You end up with paths that are more accurately drawn and with far fewer control points. Corel's contour effect generally creates paths with many hundreds of control points (mainly anchor points joining straight line segments). And then Corel's convert outline to object command often creates paths with all sorts of wierd control point problems. Illustrator is a good bit better, but still often deals out some contours with lots of path trash. For what I do, it is very important to have very clean paths. I don't want a CNC router glitching out because it reached a stretch of G-code that was all gummed up due to some screwy path routes or 7 control points aligned to the same spot.

Anyway, to get back to the point about Freehand's issue with duplicate paths, often when I use Freehand's expand outline function and remove overlaps xtra I'll often get a duplicate of the original source object. This mainly occurs with compound paths.

I'm waiting on delivery of IllustratorCS2. I'm hoping its capability for outlining objects and such is improved over some of its past versions (mainly 7 through 10).