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View Full Version : EngraveLab VS Corel Draw



Alan Young
03-03-2005, 5:21 PM
Any thoughts. I use Corel Draw 12 and have no complaints but would like to know what others think about EngraveLab. I do mostly Vector cutting at the present time.

Alan

Rodne Gold
03-03-2005, 11:36 PM
We use Signlab (full module , with engravelab , profile lab and all the bells and whistles in terms of add on modules)
It , to be blunt , sucks!!! (we use ver 5 , perhaps in other versions they have got rid of the terriblly poor jagged screen graphics that make it almost unuseable)
We really only use it as the back end for our engraving machines (we have many rotarys , cncs and overhead routers) as its pretty good driving them and has nice toolpath and manual engraving features , there are one or 2 other features we use like the badge feature etc.
Corel or Autocad/illustrator are our prime design programs for our lasers and we also use it to drive em , the only time I use engrave/signlab is for something like serialization which Corel doesnt do well. I would never have paid for it as a laser engraving package, but it came with our overhead router as part of the deal. You need to use a dongle with it and can use it on one puter only , we have had issues with the dongle and also had some issues when we upgraded to XP pro. Corel is also a lot better than our version (5) when importing and exporting various other file formats and we get tons of different ones from the ad agencies , users etc.
Corel is cheap , potent , works well with our lasers (gcc) and our thermal printer , our digital printers etc etc etc - why not try that first before springing for Engravelab?

Kevin Huffman
03-04-2005, 9:25 AM
Hello Alan and Rodne,
Rodne you are correct, Version 5 of Engravelab isn't the best version of software that Cadlink has put out but it is very useful. There are options in Engravelab like badgeing and barcodeing that are in Engravelab that aren't in Corel Draw.
The main difference between Corel Draw and Engravelab is the interface. Corel Draw everything is right in front of you or 1 menu deep in the program. There are some settings and windows in Engravelab that are as far as 5 levels deep. So alot people feel that is why it is so hard to work with.
If you are looking to get a copy of Engravelab, I would wait about 1 or 2 more months. Right now we are currentley on Version 6.1 Rev 17 and they just put out Version 7.1 of Signlab (vinyl cutter version of engravelab). Historicaly they put engravelab out about 2 months after signlab comes out. If you wait you won't have to go through doing an upgrade charge when the put out the new version.

Alan Young
03-04-2005, 9:27 AM
Thanks Rodne

I use Corel Draw 12 and really like it. It was suggested to check out Engrave Lab but when I looked at the specs I did not see where it would do much more then Corel. The only thing I saw was the contour cut around a raster image but I find it hard to believe it would work better then Trace. The other thing was the nesting option. I have not found a good way to do automatic nesting in Corel but I can not see paying so much for those few items. It might be different if I had other machines like you to use it on. I think I will get Photograv, but that is another topic.

Alan

Chuck Burke
03-11-2005, 8:05 PM
Alan,
My two cents. I have Engrave Lab 6 and Corel 12. The ONLY time I use EngraveLab is when I am laser engraving a glass using my rotary attachment. Other than that I find Corel to be much more user friendly.

Chuck Burke
American Pacific Awards.

Hilton Lister
08-18-2005, 3:10 PM
We have two versions of EngraveLab. Version 4.95 and Vision Pro (Version 6)
I like version 4.95 even though it will often not engrave very small objects like dotting an "i". and the fills are not so hot. As for version 6, well I probably should'nt go there. The on screen text editing is a right pain. as it is far too easy to move or change something when sweep selecting, and it doesn't seem to sweep select easily. You cannot duplicate an object by moving and hitting the + button as you can in the older version. Sometimes when working with text, you can hit enter and lose everything off the screen. And you can't get it back by undoing! Trouble is that it doesn't happen often enough to track circumstances.
The fact that you must tell it to redraw the screen after editing nodes to find out where they actually are, is most annoying.
However, there is always more than one way you can achieve the effect or result you require, so it has it's advantages.
What annoys me most is the price you have to pay to upgrade (i.e, get the next version where the bugs are fixed??)
It may well be that as I become older, I find it more difficult to learn the programs. I still prefer Corel Version 8! Hence my frustration with EngraveLab Version 6.

George M. Perzel
08-18-2005, 6:38 PM
Hi Kevin;
I don't have Engravelab, so should really keep my big mouth shut, BUT, I really wonder about something that's in Rev 17!
George