Printing to Eplilog laser from Autocad

[Michael Simpson Virgina]

Has anyone set up an Epilog Laser to print from Autocad. I am having two problems.

1. The the page size keeps getting swaped from 24x12 to 12x24
2. I cant seem to get the thing to recognize the lines as vector so it tries to vector them. I know it has to do with line width but it seems as though the printer interface in Autocad is messing with the line thickness.

[Chris DeGerolamo]

AutoCAD to Epilog sucks...we started out that way and quickly changed to importing and printing from Corel Draw...

Make sure your page size in the print dialog box is square; this should help with the flip flopping. So if you are cutting a rectangle that is 12x12, draw a larger rectangle like 14x14 and put all your cutting/etching entities inside that. Then set your page size in the Epilog print driver to your larger rectangle (14x14). I just pulled these out of the air; do what works for you.

EDIT: set your limits too and set your plot area to LIMITS in the PLOT dialog box. Put bottom left of rectangle at 0,0 and set your limits to top right.

To get the Epilog to recognize the cut lines, change all the entities you intend on cutting to polylines with a width of .01. This will stink if you have any ellipses to cut, so you want to change your PELLIPSE variable to 1.

I'll try to check back in a few if you have any other questions.

[Michael Simpson Virgina]

I need to print a full 24x12 so how is 12,12 going to help me? I cant believe thire is not a way to print to the laseer at 24x12.

It looks like autocad can print to an array of ploters and printers that are oirented with the X axis longer than the Y axis.


Is this a problem with the Epilog driver?

[Michael Simpson Virgina]

One problem solved. in version 2011 of auto cad all drawings have the lineweight set to ByLayer. If you go into the layer properties you can set the layer lineweight to .002 and it will vector cut.


If I set the scale to 1-1 then I get perfect cuts.

The last problem I believe is an Epilog driver problem. IF you select the driver and have it will select the correct 24x12 page setting. Its only when you enter into the Eplilog driver that it gets reversed to 12x24 which breaks everything.

[Chris DeGerolamo]

I need to print a full 24x12 so how is 12,12 going to help me? I cant believe thire is not a way to print to the laseer at 24x12.

It looks like autocad can print to an array of ploters and printers that are oirented with the X axis longer than the Y axis.


Is this a problem with the Epilog driver?

Sorry, looking at this at 5:00 I didn't even see you had posted your size...

The point still stands though that if you would have made the outer rectangle 24x24, the orientation wouldn't matter, and worse case you rotate all your objects 90 degrees.

[Josh Jelinek]

As far as the flip flopping problem goes. I have noticed that when I make a custom paper size layout in Page setup of Autocad when the width is bigger than the height (which is true for your problem) the page set up automatically changes to landscape view vs. portrait.

Just make sure in page setup and plot set up that you have selected portrait or it will flip flop your image as you send it to the laser. I am thinking the autocad setting take precedence over the laser driver.

Can you speak more to the Line wieghts?? No matter what I try...AutoCad will only allow me to use .05 mm or .00 mm. This makes combined mode impossible for us.

We have autocad 2011 and a epilogue zing 60 watt.

Thanks.

[Michael Simpson Virgina]

On the line wieghts first you need to go into options. Select the User Preferences Tab and then the LineWeight Settings. Change them to inches. Also set thje

Then click layer properties in the layer module on the ribbon. Double click the lineweight column and chane it to .002.

Now any item that has its setting to ByLayer will use .002 and on my system it does vecter cuts.


All that said. I have to agree Autocad is not a verygood match to use with the epilog laser systems. Its listed as compatible but that is only technicly correct and any one who has used other products sich as ilistrator or coreldraw will know this to be true. When using coreldraw its darn near plug and play.