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QR Codes -Over 3K of them - Best way to layout

Dtron10

Graphic Design/Production
Hey All...I've got a project that the customer supplied over 3,300 individual QR codes. They requested them to be .5" x .5" circle decals. There's 10 different PDF's that has all the QR codes on them. What would you recommend to be the most efficient way to set these up in like a step and repeat process so I don't have to manually put cut lines on every single one myself? Thank you in advance!
 

Signstein

New Member
Yikes! If it were me, I'd try setting up a Photoshop action to place all the QR codes into a nested pattern. Then plop that in Illustrator to add cutlines. Or maybe there is an AI that could do this? I'm not familiar enough with Gemini/GPT to say, but others may be able to steer you in a better direction.
 
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victor bogdanov

Active Member
Are they all spaced out evenly? if spaced out evenly would be pretty quick to make one row manually then copy down using the repeat command in illustrator, I've had similar stuff in the past that wasn't evenly spaced and got it manually done overseas. Cost like $20 to set up for couple thousand decals
 
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LizKeenan

New Member
I made a script for making grids of decals and such. It is based on LadyGin's Griddder script. It is very similar except it will count your output, it can also work with groups and can count sub groups. It tells you the overall height and width, though it lacks a preview yet. The script is called griddder_count_04_patched.jsx

or depending on how you mean you need these laid out there is a script called harmonizer that will grid out any group of objects by ladygin

 
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Check first that they are clear enough to work at 1/2 inch!!! I get customers sending me their web sized crappy QRs that are questionable
 
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JBurton

Signtologist
Check first that they are clear enough to work at 1/2 inch!!! I get customers sending me their web sized crappy QRs that are questionable
That was my thought, along with is there enough bleed to avoid clipping portions off from not perfect plots. Nothing better than 3k useless stickers, or worse, stickers that send folks off to random corners of the internet...
 
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untitled

New Member
There is a way to do it in Illustrator by using the Variables tool. Essentially you separate them into single files, setup up a spread sheet with the file locations, setup a template in a single illustrator file and then import the spreadsheet and use an action to save each file with QR code and cut lines. There are tutorials on how to do it and the steps on YouTube somewhere, also guides in other places if you look up how to use Illustrator Variables. Below is my instruction list I made for myself when I did a bunch previously. It's not exactly worded for others to understand so probably best to follow instructions elsewhere. One thing to note is to use Google Sheets to make your .csv, as for some reason it wouldn't work in Excel for me when exporting the file. It takes some time to figure out the first time around, but then after it's much easier.

-Setup main illustrator file in Production folder J3679.ai
-Get list of source files in directory
*Use PowerShell to get a list of files in the directory w/path.
Get-ChildItem -Path "G:\OneDrive\Job Files\clientName\Signage\J3679 - QR Codes - 1000\sf" -Recurse | Select-Object FullName >filelist.txt
*add " " around objects when they have a space in the file path.
-Copy file names into google sheets database and download as CSV.
*Make sure to leave the @qr on the top line.
-Illustrator variables panel -> Load Variable Library choose the CSV database.
-Illustrator Actions panel -> Batch -> Convert to dir. Save as PDF
**Below is for setting up the files into batches of print files if you don't just nest them in your rip.**
-Combine pdf files for import into illustrator
-Drag combined files into illustrator
-Embed files
-Select all clipping masks and delete
-Arrange artboards for 24 lines
*check to make sure the height for files is correct.
-Select all and transform -> rotate 90°
-Move one item from each line and align the line straight multiple times
-Arrange lines with 0 spacing -> group
 
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