New to LXi/Flexi, really liking it.

[Rodi]

Got Master Plus 8.0 and it came in time for Christmas… been sick, but working on it has been really nice. It was easy to setup my cutter (I do vynul only), it took me an hour or so and would have been much quicker had I NOTICED that you need to have a serial cable plugged into the cutter for production manager to cut from! Right away I noticed how much smoother it was than what I have used up until now.

I have been able to bring in just the vinyl (spot) colors I need Nice! I love the weld, stripe and fan. The distortion will take some to get used to, but it seems nice.

Not digging the font menu though… but it did come with a lot of CasFonts and standard fonts. Probably need more time on it to get used to it. One great thing I love is the kerning window it reminds me of FontLab and FontStudio, so I am right at home there.

Some of the stuff I passed by and thought was nice was the borders, So far its stable (even on my creeky ole P4 with 256 mb ram and a semi-good hard drive.

In a way it really reminds me of Freehand how it is setup, and if you know me, that is a huge plus plus plus!

Reading from the archive in the last few days helped immensely.

 

[Allied Digital]

Not digging the font menu though… but it did come with a lot of CasFonts and standard fonts. Probably need more time on it to get used to it.

There are different ways to use the font menu. (about three that I can think of off hand) If you highlight a particular letter or set of letters and then go over to the production manager, scroll through the fonts, you can easily i.d. a font - - by highlighting a unique. Play around with it.
I LOVE Flexi. It is so user friendly.

 

[Allied Digital]

Oh - afterthought. If you meant you didn't like the fonts provided ... by not "digging the menu" then download any fonts you like - drag them into >C >Windows >Font folder restart and that font will be loaded into the menu.

 

[Rodi]

No problems with the fonts themselves, but it seems a little less intuitive from the menu standpoint, but like I said the Kerning adjustments are totally great! Really just a minor gripe at a first time flexi/lxi user.

 

[Fred Weiss]

Reviews of LXi software can be added HERE.

 

[Rodi]

Hi Fred, I am not yet knowledgeable enough on the software to give a review of it, but when I am comfortable enough with it, I most certainly will.

 

[bob]

Got Master Plus 8.0 and it came in time for Christmas… been sick, but working on it has been really nice. It was easy to setup my cutter (I do vynul only), it took me an hour or so and would have been much quicker had I NOTICED that you need to have a serial cable plugged into the cutter for production manager to cut from! Right away I noticed how much smoother it was than what I have used up until now.

I have been able to bring in just the vinyl (spot) colors I need Nice! I love the weld, stripe and fan. The distortion will take some to get used to, but it seems nice.

Not digging the font menu though… but it did come with a lot of CasFonts and standard fonts. Probably need more time on it to get used to it. One great thing I love is the kerning window it reminds me of FontLab and FontStudio, so I am right at home there.

Flexi is great for arranging together some text and images and sending them off to a plotter or printer.

Flexi excels with it's inline/outline/contour mechanisms. Visually the very same thing can be done with other packages. Mechanically Flexi Keeps everything proper and right for cutting.

Flexi's font handling is exactly the same as that of most any other package. It didn't used to be so but back around version 5 or 6 they came into the civilized world and started working off of the same font directory that everyone else has been using since day one.

Flexi's distortion envelope tool sucks the big hairy wet one, and at the same time, for very simple distortions, is OK. Would that they implement a free form envelope tool ala Corel.

Flexi's bitmap capabilities puts the 'P' into primitive. Generally worthless as compared to other packages. But then Flexi was never designed as a robust bitmap handler.

Flexi's path and node editing is a combination of some really nice features and an infuriating lack of utility. It lacks the ability to apply a change, other than delete, to a selected group of nodes. Most annoying is the inability to marquee select a group of nodes on a selected object without also selecting nodes on other currently unselected objects that unfortunately also fall within the marquee.

All in all, if cutting vinyl is your main thing, You could do a whole hell of a lot worse than Flexi.

 

[Fred Weiss]

Flexi's path and node editing is a combination of some really nice features and an infuriating lack of utility. It lacks the ability to apply a change, other than delete, to a selected group of nodes. Most annoying is the inability to marquee select a group of nodes on a selected object without also selecting nodes on other currently unselected objects that unfortunately also fall within the marquee.

Disagree with you one this one. The Optimize by Curve tool allows for superb path cleanup in very little time. It alone, without consideration for the rest of the node editing tools, places Flexi at the top of the heap in path editing.

 

[bob]

Disagree with you one this one. The Optimize by Curve tool allows for superb path cleanup in very little time. It alone, without consideration for the rest of the node editing tools, places Flexi at the top of the heap in path editing.

I agree that the Optimize by Curve tool is a gem. So are some of the others. Unfortunately, for the reasons I previously mentioned and a number of others, Flexi's path manipulation tools basically suck when taken as an entire package and compared to other packages. Even the
Optimize by Curve tool drops the ball when trying to simplify compound curves requiring multiple invocations of the tool. . It's extremely difficult to end up without double nodes at the beginning and end of each compound segment.

The problem with Flexi's node editing capabilities is that they provide some dynamite special purpose tools but totally drop the ball trying to tie it up into a coherent usable package. All in all, I'll opt for Corel for general path creation and manipulation. Only if I have a specific need for one of Flexi's unique tools will I use Flexi for diddling paths. Which isn't often.

 

[Rodi]

Another day of working on it and it is a real nice tool, I really like how you can move around easy, even as a flexi newb (but not new to vector programs). So far I love the stripes, the trapping and I still find the font interface (especially the font menu) lacking. But I have decide to dedicate my free time to learning the program inside out. By the time I am done with it I will be proficient at it.

The "Appearance" change is kinda hokey, I am having a slight issue with saving some docs, but it is most likely me. I love the fact that it works on 2GHZ P4 with only 256 mB Ram and still smooth. It seems to bring in lots of different file formats pretty well.

I could see it being a good design tool for me.

Does anyone have any comments about things I should be looking into? I'm kinda working from my slanted view of vinyl work and my strong graphics background.

 

[Replicator]

Must be the learning curve, because AAG is really good with Flexi node editing, but I can't stand it, and prefer the node editing in other programs.