Vector cutting - coral vs. illustrator

[Mike Kurtz]

Hi folks,

Im a newbie, just got my 45 watt epilog and got some questions. I came with experience using Illustrator 9 very proficiently, but I am having a problem getting the laser to recognize vector cutting. I have coral 12 and it works fine with the hairline weight on the line, however I cannot seem to get the laser to recognize the same line in illustrator. Any suggestion?

Lots of great info here! Thanks for the replies.

[Ted Shrader]

Hi Mike -

Welcome to the Creek. A great place to hang out and exchange ideas. Be sure to visit the other forums around here for additional good info.

Welcome,
Ted

[Shaddy Dedmore]

Is there a way to specify actual line width? I don't have that program, but MAYbe its 'hairline' is thicker than Corel's. Could you choose say, .025 pt for a thickness? Or as small as you can go.

I can't remember the exact crossover, but the epilog driver has a line thickness where everything below it is a vector, and above it raster. Hairline has always worked for vector for me, because I've stuck to Corel. When I want it Raster, I go to .500 pt

I'm sure someone will pipe up with the crossover thickness...

Welcome to the Creek

Shaddy

[Jonathan Szczepanski]

Is there a way to specify actual line width? I don't have that program, but MAYbe its 'hairline' is thicker than Corel's. Could you choose say, .025 pt for a thickness? Or as small as you can go.
In Illustrator, you can specify the line thickness to any size that you want, in almost any unit of measurement - points, picas, millimeters, inches, pixels...

I don't know if that will solve the problem though.

[Kevin Huffman]

Hey Mike,
Welcome to the creek. Come on in the water is great and the information is better.
As far as trying to get it to cut, I would try setting your unit of measurement to inch's and try .001. That is what you have to set Coral to for it to be able to cut with our Pinnacle Lasers. I might work for you. I have a couple of AI user with our laser and I am have been told they have not been able to get it to vector cut. Good luck.

[Ken Nelsen]

Hi Mike,
Why not do your work in Illustrator and then import the .ai file into Corel to send to the laser.

[Mike Mackenzie]

We Have always had problems with Illustrator versions from 8 on not recognizing vectors properly. They have come out with Illustrator CS. This was supposed to correct the Vector problems. It is my understanding that this is an Illustrator BUG not with any system.

You can try to upgrade to CS we have got it to work with Vectors.

[Keith Outten]

Mike,

According to my Epilog owners manual any line that is less than .003" will vector cut. Using Corel Draw we normally set all vector lines to "Hairline" and they will vector cut. Hope this helps.

[Mike Kurtz]

thanks for the replies, I have tried changing the line thickness with no avail, the only problem with doing the work in illustrator and changing over to corel to do the cutting is it changes the properties of some of my work. Looks like I might have to upgrade. Wonder if epilog would make a driver the would allow me to work with my current illustrator?

[Roy Brewer]

Your Epilog will work fine with CS, but not with 8-10. Even with ai5-7 it was a bit "buggy" but you could coerce it to work.

To add a little more detail to what others have provided, Adobe always assumes the final output is to a postscript printer (which for Apple users is indeed almost always the case); postscript is an Adobe concept/product.

Who am I to consider them arrogant because they would always respond: "why do you need true vector output? Just go to a postscript device!"

[Linda Forte]

Hi, I'm a college graphic design instructor and new to the laser community. Just wanted to know if the upgrade to Illustrator CS definitely fixed the problem of vector cutting. I use Adobe products extensively and I believe the problem is that Adobe's stroke weight will default to "no stroke" if it is set to .001".

I'm enjoying the message board!:cool:

[Mike Mackenzie]

Linda,

You are correct and yes we believe that the CS version has corrected that BUG

We have used it with our equipment without any issues.