Basic sign making program

[tom buttons]

sign making is not my main use of the shopbot but i do have the need to make some signs for myself to put in the front/back/side of our shop with our name on them instead of paying someone else to make them for us! just looking for the basics. something that can rout out the letters or leave them and remove the background. are there any free programs that can do these basic tasks i need? i tried the typesetter program and that is useable but i was hoping to remove the background and leave the letters raised. thanks so much and Merry Christmas to all..

[danhamm@abccom.bc.ca]

I don't know of any free programs, but coreldraw
comes pretty cheap if you get and older copy
say seven or eight..it will do pocketing and
raised letters.. its all I use.. If you would like
it doesn't take many minutes to make a cut file
I can give you a hand.. I have some samples on
my website,if you are interested..
www.burningimpressions.ca/signs

[peterk]

try desk engrave . free download


www.deskam.com

[jkforney@yahoo.com]

Tom
Vector CadCam came with the machine. It will do pocketed letters. That is letters that are left after routing out the back ground. In the manual on the cd there is a section on doing raised letters. If , after reading the manual, you have questions on how to do raised letters, feel free to email me.

John Forney

[roney roney]

Thanks peterk,

Visiting Deskam's site was sooooooooooo most excellent. The "free program download",is totally free and you are absolutly telling it straight up.

Have been fooling around with it for two days now and it is by far the easiest thing in the woorld to use. It uses any and I mean any TT (true type) font styles. Although I am quite sure the designers intended it's use to be for engraving small name plates and other various items, it can be used for so much more. For example, I just finished typeing in the letter"S" told the program i wanted it 30" tall picked one of the hundreds of font styles "and they all seem to work flawlessly", pressed enter, saved as a "G code" file, copied that file to disk, as I do most all of my designing at my office computer, ploped the disk into shopbot puter..FC to "g"
and BAM.....out comes a 30" tall scripted "S"
WOW........ALSO there are roughly 30-35 fonts like ANIMALS, SPORTS, FOOD, etc...whose fonts are actually pictures of different items "instead of letters" and these are automatically converted into "G code" for you....so totally awesome...

.......roney