Archive through February 03, 2002

[jimt]

I'm in the process of moving my shop to a new location and as part of the deal, I promised the landlord a new carved sign board for all the business in the building (four at this point). I have CorelDraw and AutoCad 2000. What else do I need to cut carved signs? Since I'm not in the sign business, I don't want to invest a lot in software for this job since it's a freebie. As one possibility, if I designed the signs in Corel Draw, would anybody be willing to do the conversions to cutting files for me.

Thanks

Jim Turner

[danhamm@abccom.bc.ca]

Jim corel is all you need, I make signs daily
all I use is corel.. Make your corel page the size
of your table, Place your design dead center of the table if your table is 48/96 place at 24/48
save as dxf. or export as dxf. find it in your
shopbot file converter, it will come up 2/d or 3/d
next will be your z axis height, then first color depth, and then second color depth.and so on.
then cut.. if you are unsure then send them and i can have a look see..

[garbob]

Corel Draw is fine for doing this, as Dan states. Corel Draw AND/OR Shopbot like to play tricks on each other. Whatever size of material you use in Draw is not converted properly to SB files. The exact centre of the material in Draw becomes the 0,0 point in SB.

I find that I am easily confused by screwed up technology, SO what I do is - if I am interested in using a 4 by 8 sheet I make the size of the material 8 by 16 in Draw (four times as big). Now you set guidelines at 96,48 and work from these as your 0,0 point in Corel Draw. I am not sure, but I seem to remember that if you turn on snap to guidelines and then drag your 0,0 setter (from the top left corner of the page) to the intersection of the guidelines all of your offsets on the top left four by eight sheet will be correct and SB will still work from this point. I'm afraid that I haven't done this in quite some time as I do not use SB software for cutting files, only the SB converter from RAMS software and it doesn't do the weird offset thing.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

[Rgengrave@aol.com]

Well to solve the mystery of where the 0,0 will be in shopbot using coreldraw? Just reopen the file in another cad program and set to 0,0 then resave , works for me

[danhamm@abccom.bc.ca]

I don,t know what you are doing wrong Gary:
but I do know that the mathematics of coreldraw
file is the same as any other,I use them as dxf
dwg,cdr,psd, and many many others, I have a "lot"
of dxf files made with coreldraw then they are sent to 'Canadian Wood Council' for their use
and are also used by the American counterpart,
Which of coarse use exclusively "autocad" I to use
autocad to convert dwg files to dxf "when they have text blockers in them or macro's connections.

I know there are conflics in some versions of corel,with activex controls on some video cards
this appears as a tearing or broken segments in
dxf.files, but I have never had a bad cut using the shopbot converter in conjunction with a dxf. file created in corel, there quite a few shopbotters that have downloaded and cut my dxf
files , there comments have never included any registration problems..

[davidallen]

corel has an option to set/move the origin. you can set the location to be anywhere on the page layout. I think the default is top/left corner, but that can be changed in a number of ways. search the help file for the keyword 'origin'.

da

[danhamm@abccom.bc.ca]

Sorry:' "EXPORT or SAVEAS" filters'
Corel when asked about the problem, their response to DXF registration was to use HPGL as this is capable of using the"EXPORT or SAVEAS" features of hpgl,to center or lower left but, on "DXF" its only the center of the page.. and I cannot make the HPGL function on the shopbot converter work..

[garbob]

I hope that what I said makes sense to some of the people confused about the CorelDraw to SB file conversions.

You are the people that I was aiming my comments at.

[jimt]

Dan,

What kind of cutter are you using to cut your signs? I'm thinking of a v-bit cutter to get the carved sign look. And how about those sharp corners on some letters?

Thanks

Jim

[imserv@imsrv.com]

Jim if you have a Vector 9 CD, there are demo copies of Vcarvz and Vfontz included. Both are 30 day demos, and you should have plenty of time to get your sign carved, without having to buy any software.

[danhamm@abccom.bc.ca]

I'm not sure which one's your refering to,
I use mostly profile bits, or roundover bead type bits, to get that carved look, they have them from
1/2 in down to 1/8 in. if you want a pic. of them
I have one..

[jimt]

Dan,

Are you cutting out individual letters, or carving the signs out of a solid board? and Fred, I don't have Vector, but are those vcarvz and vfontz programs available anywhere else? Who makes them?

Thanks

Jim

[imserv@imsrv.com]

http://www.vectorcam.com

There are downloads of both demos available.

Do you have a Shopbot?

[signguy@rcn.com]

In signs for four years now. Prt 96
I've been designing in Corel.
I tried Vector.
I tried Engravelab.
I tried Profilelab.
They all work.

I bought Rams

http://www.rams-software.com/

Here's your plug DF!!

[danhamm@abccom.bc.ca]

Jim,
Most of my signs are made of wood, but I also carve out letters for sale at windsor plywood stores. There is a lot of business out there for the large chain outlets but the contracts they want you to sign are scary..
What I do is simple,straight forward,and attractive, its not 3/d but has that appearence,
why not email me and I'll make you one to cut.

[toygate]

I would like to make signs on the Shopbot using Coreldraw 8. I tried a test file entering text, saving as a .dxf and converting it to a SB file. When I convert it I always get an unexploded text error. What am I doing wrong?

[dougl]

Wayne:

You will need to convert your text to curves before you export your file. To do so - select your text and from the arrange menu - select convert to curves.

Doug

[toygate]

I have been able to use Coreldraw 8 and convert my text to curves. The conversion to the SB file works except the origin doesn't seem to ever be in the right place. I zero out all 3 axis and run the file. I have zeroed the Z axis against the stock to be carved but it runs up above that point so I have to try to compensate by zeroing the Z axis below the top surface of the stock. The Y axis starting point also is not in the correct place. How do I overcome this problem?

[danhamm@abccom.bc.ca]

Wayne,
Coreldraw exports at the center of the table to
this ends up being at lower left in the shopbot
after conversion..
In other words save or export from (24, 48,)
it will be at 0.0 on the shopbot..

[gerald_d]

Corel is not very big over here, and we have now been asked to quote on a sign, where our client has supplied artwork in Corel.

Could anybody out there convert it to a dxf for us?

The files are here:
Grapic1.cdr (ftp://ftp.shopbottools.com/incoming/graphic1.cdr)
fatman.cdr (ftp://ftp.shopbottools.com/incoming/fatman.cdr)
new-1.cdr (ftp://ftp.shopbottools.com/incoming/new-1.cdr)

Our clickable e-mail address. (mailto:mechtron@iafrica.com)

Thanks in advance
Gerald & Sean

[danhamm@abccom.bc.ca]

Gerald I just took alook at 2 of the files you
have up above. fatman and new-1. the other I can't ftp..for some reason...the files are just bitmaps, they are not vector type files and cant
be manipulated without redrawing into a vectorized
format..unusable in that format...Dan

[gerald_d]

Thanks Dan.

[pjldesigns@hotmail.com]

Could only download fatman.cdr, conversion successful, will send you copy by email
Phil

[gerald_d]

Thanks to everybody who helped. Job done.