Something to share

[Hannu Rinne]

Hi to all,

Pease, feel free to use the attached drawing at anyway you like, if anyone want to...

Some days ago I got an order from my "customer" to cut few doors from laminated wood. He sent me hand drawed sketch and I spent some hours to draw it with CorelDraw. After I finished I tried to reach him to ask if the drawing would be ok, but I never heard from him anymore - he didn't answer to my mail aswell to my call's - obviously his phone number was a fake :(

So, it was a good lesson for me to be a little more careful with my customer's :D

Best regards,
- Hannu

[Larry Bratton]

Wow! Thanks for posting that. Huge amount of work in it. Sorry you got stiffed. Possibly someone else would like to have some doors like that.

[Mark Winlund]

Hi to all,

Pease, feel free to use the attached drawing at anyway you like, if anyone want to...

Some days ago I got an order from my "customer" to cut few doors from laminated wood. He sent me hand drawed sketch and I spent some hours to draw it with CorelDraw. After I finished I tried to reach him to ask if the drawing would be ok, but I never heard from him anymore - he didn't answer to my mail aswell to my call's - obviously his phone number was a fake :(

So, sometimes s..t happens - it was a good lesson for me to be a little more careful with my customer's :D

Best regards,
- Hannu

Too bad none of the lines are joined together. It would have made a great ventilation grill.

Mark

[Larry Bratton]

Dang..Mark..right again. I just took a quick look. I didn't look at the objects.

[David Fairfield]

Bummer, I know what that's like. That's often a problem with custom work. One thing I learned is watch out for customers who seem a little cagey before engaging in any labor.

Anyone who fails to give a full name in their initial contact email gets ignored. Anyone who sounds clueless gets ignored. Anyone who tries to negotiate by saying they "have a guy who can do it cheaper" gets ignored. Any other tips for who gets ignored, I'd like to know!

Of course, being suspicious doesn't help with customer relations, its a fine balance there. Fortunately I've built my business up to the point where I can be picky about which custom jobs I accept.

Dave

[Ron Chapellaz]

Hi Hannu,
I really liked your design and thought I would close the curves so it can be furthur used as Mark had suggested. This has been saved as Ver. 8 so hopefully all can use it.

[Larry Bratton]

Thanks Ron, I was going to do the same thing but you did it for me.

[paul mott]

Thank you for sharing the file Hannu.

Fortunately there is only one missing line (as can be seen in the pic) and it is not too difficult to replace.
It will be ideal for me to use 1/4 of this design on the front of a small box I have been asked to make so thanks once again.

Paul.

Added: Thanks for V8 Ron - now to make the box.

[Ron Chapellaz]

Show us your finished sample when your done Paul!

[Greg Bednar]

Very nice Hannu, and thanks. Paul, I ran the file in X5 and can't see where you got the uncut line on the lower right quadrant of your photo. It all looks pretty well buttoned up, although I haven't run the file myself. But the area that is uncut, Paul, fills in with color on my end, indicating it is a closed line.

[Hannu Rinne]

Thank's to all for your kind replys !

I'm sorry that it was/is unfinished drawing ! I didn't believe that my "customer" just would accept it without any changes, so it is some kind of rough plan... And after I couldn't reach him I was so frustrated to this job that I just left it as it is ! Anyway, thank's to Ron for making the drawing useful. Thank's Paul, I really hope that you can make some profit with it :)

Best regards
- Hannu

[Ron Chapellaz]

Greg, when I opened Hannu's original file in X5 it had that line missing as well. The only curves that were closed were all of the circles, except for one. Did you possibly grab the modified version I posted? If not, this has me stumped!

[Viktor Voroncov]

Thank's Hannu, perfect job! And absolutely agree with David!

[Mitchell Andrus]

Wow! Thanks for posting that. Huge amount of work in it.

Actually, if you look at again you will see that you only need to create 1/16 of the drawing. This one is pretty simple geometry, much like Frank Lloyd Wright's stained glass panels.
.

[Steve Jackson2699]

Very clever! Thanks for the file and the education!

[Greg Bednar]

<snip> Did you possibly grab the modified version I posted? <snip>
Yes I did get the modified version. I thought that the jpeg posted by Paul was the one that you modded and wondered why the line was not completely cut because your version I grabbed was showing it was a closed line.
Ok - That should confuse us a little more.

[Roy Brewer]

Pease, feel free to use the attached drawing at anyway you like, if anyone want to...Hannu,

Surely you created that in CAD and imported into DRAW, right? Otherwise you are working way too hard.

All,

Talking about unscrupulous customers: we're just starting to see this trickle into the engraving business (far more common in promotional products industry). A customer sends us hand scribbled graphic and or basic ideas and asks for a quote and artwork for approval for a very large order of {fill in the blank}. We provide such and never hear back. Ah, but many months later we see our artwork on {fill in the blank} and doing a bit of research we learn our customer requested a quote from a large number of our competitors *complete, finished artwork supplied* letting them know the lowest bidder would win the contract.

I said all this to remind you that CorelDRAW's Publish to PDF allows you to lock the file where it cannot be modified or printed; can I suggest that is the way you should be sending artwork for approval?

Is there a chance this was Hannu's scenario?

[greg lindsey]

Hannu,


I said all this to remind you that CorelDRAW's Publish to PDF allows you to lock the file where it cannot be modified or printed; can I suggest that is the way you should be sending artwork for approval?

Is there a chance this was Hannu's scenario?

Very good Roy, thank you. I did not know this, and yes I too have been burned by this trickery. See, you can teach an old dog some new tricks. If you find your path brings you to Houston, give me a call, lunch is on me. We can talk about some new machinery:D

[Mark Ross]

Hannu,

Surely you created that in CAD and imported into DRAW, right? Otherwise you are working way too hard.

All,

Talking about unscrupulous customers: we're just starting to see this trickle into the engraving business (far more common in promotional products industry). A customer sends us hand scribbled graphic and or basic ideas and asks for a quote and artwork for approval for a very large order of {fill in the blank}. We provide such and never hear back. Ah, but many months later we see our artwork on {fill in the blank} and doing a bit of research we learn our customer requested a quote from a large number of our competitors *complete, finished artwork supplied* letting them know the lowest bidder would win the contract.

I said all this to remind you that CorelDRAW's Publish to PDF allows you to lock the file where it cannot be modified or printed; can I suggest that is the way you should be sending artwork for approval?

Is there a chance this was Hannu's scenario?

It depends on how unscrupulous the customer is. There is software out there that will bust an Adobe file wide open (google 'free dimitry' for an interesting read).

I would just charge a non-refundable artwork fee and demand the money up front. This whole "goes to the lowest bidder" thing is nonsense anyhow. We are starting to see customers that we lost over 2 years ago coming back and admitting that lowest doesn't always mean best value for your dollar. We charge what we charge because...well...we can :).

[Dan Hintz]

I'm with Mark... if the customer is such a dirtbag that they'll steal your work and shop it to others, they won't think twice about using a freebie program that will allow them to remove the protections from a PDF file (plenty of those programs out there, too).

[Hannu Rinne]

Roy,

I created it in Corel. Sure it would be much easier to make it with Autocad, but because my curse is always to do things as hard as possible ( say's also my wife ) I had to play with Corel :D Attached you'll find the method I was using. There's also attached one way to close the lines ( might not be very smart way, but works somehow... - I'm really not any expert with CorelDraw )

From now on I'll start to charge something in advance ( meaning unknown people ) to make sure to have some bread some day :D

Best regards
- Hannu

[Paul Brinkmeyer]

[QUOTE=Roy Brewer;1480765]Hannu,

Talking about unscrupulous customers: we're just starting to see this trickle into the engraving business (far more common in promotional products industry). A customer sends us hand scribbled graphic and or basic ideas and asks for a quote and artwork for approval for a very large order of {fill in the blank}. We provide such and never hear back. Ah, but many months later we see our artwork on {fill in the blank} QUOTE]


We see a LOT of this, but lately government entities have hit us the hardest.
Normally we could see this coming, and had never been "gotten" to bad, But we got caught off guard 2x's in a short time...both times by what seamed like honest city/county empolyees. And one group of city employyes asked us to do a project under the table to avoid city taxes. We would not do that and they found someone who would.
It is getting hard to make a honest living anymore.

But I did want to add, that when we suspect this, I will reduce the artwork to a very low resulution bitmap, and make them come into the shop to see bettter. If it has to be electronic, I embed text into files and make it so it is hardly there, transparency tool in CD, but still they can not easily use it for anything else.

Just some added tools to try to stop this.

[Ron Chapellaz]

I do the same as Paul. I put the words SAMPLE ONLY over top of all text and graphics on all outgoing artwork. I export as jpeg with lower resolution. If they want to take that somewhere else it means alot of work to salvage it. I have yet to have anyone do that.

[Hannu Rinne]

Paul & Ron,

Thank's for the tips, I've to try those ! Making the job's under the table is quite big problem here - but mostly with individuals, not with the firm's ! 8/10 of the enquirys ( private person's ) are asked to do without paying taxes and when I refuse, that's it... ! Via my other work I've started to get some nice deal's from several different firm's - My wish is that I could do business only with those, without private people ( without harm's :) ) - doing extra rating plates to electric motors, seem's that the need is quite big and just growing. Still, might be just a dream to work without privates, so I have to try to conform to their needs and make my pricing good enough to them - with the taxes :D

- Hannu

[Roy Brewer]

There's also attached one way to close the lines ( might not be very smart way, but works somehow... - I'm really not any expert with CorelDraw )
Hannu,


I understand that if you've already climbed the learning curve in autocad, it's no fun to have to start at the bottom in a new program. In your example, however, try this:

create two circles and combine
add the rectangles
select all three(combined circle, 2 rectangles)
Weld
perfect symetry(if properly done) and all closed lines!

[Mark Ross]

[QUOTE=Roy Brewer;1480765]Hannu,

Talking about unscrupulous customers: we're just starting to see this trickle into the engraving business (far more common in promotional products industry). A customer sends us hand scribbled graphic and or basic ideas and asks for a quote and artwork for approval for a very large order of {fill in the blank}. We provide such and never hear back. Ah, but many months later we see our artwork on {fill in the blank} QUOTE]


We see a LOT of this, but lately government entities have hit us the hardest.
Normally we could see this coming, and had never been "gotten" to bad, But we got caught off guard 2x's in a short time...both times by what seamed like honest city/county empolyees. And one group of city employyes asked us to do a project under the table to avoid city taxes. We would not do that and they found someone who would.
It is getting hard to make a honest living anymore.

But I did want to add, that when we suspect this, I will reduce the artwork to a very low resulution bitmap, and make them come into the shop to see bettter. If it has to be electronic, I embed text into files and make it so it is hardly there, transparency tool in CD, but still they can not easily use it for anything else.

Just some added tools to try to stop this.


Google watermark removal tool...they even have tools to remove watermarks from videos.

Again, usually the level of skill it takes to use these types of software, people that know how to are not unscrupulous, but well...watermarks can even be removed.

Maybe the best thing is a low res camera snapshot of the screen...I don't know...