Corel & cutting in arcs instead of a smooth circle?

[Neville Stewart]

What am I not doing when I cut .ai files for one particular customer, it steps around the cuts in arcs instead of circles?

[Lee DeRaud]

Try pulling up the 'shape' tool in Corel and looking at the curves in question: I suspect you'll find many more nodes than necessary, due to either Adobe's export or Corel's import.
The 'reduce nodes' button should clear that up.

[Kev Williams]

Ironically enough, I ran into this just the other day, with my own artwork no less. I was cutting these out on the Explorer, and rather than a nice smooth cut path, it was cutting in stop n' go 'chunks'- A check of the shape shows a zillion nodes, and the machine slows down (or stops) briefly at each one. FWIW my LS900 ignores nodes like this, always cuts very smoothly. This is a several-years-old file that I ran on the Explorer for the first time.

Anyway-- what to do? No matter what I try, I can't find a way reduce the nodes. As you can see, the option doesn't exist, it's grayed out. I've tried exporting and re-importing as EPS and DXF files, and even though the DXF has the 'automatically reduce nodes' option on import, it doesn't change.

This is easy enough to fix, which I did- just re-draw the circles, add the notch and weld it, then copy & paste what I need-- But what about complex shapes containing arcs and radii that would be much harder to simply do-over? You CAN simply group and delete nodes, but then the shape changes. I'm using X4 btw...

Because the LS900 doesn't have a 'chunk' problem, I've never noticed it, but now that the Explorer is sharing it's duties, I'd LOVE to find a fix for this! And the chunking-cut isn't just an anomaly to watch as the machine cuts, the finished pieces look like crap, they're just as bumpy as the pic...

http://www.engraver1.com/erase2/nodes.jpg

[Bert Kemp]

? don't the nodes go away if you group all

[Lee DeRaud]

Anyway-- what to do? No matter what I try, I can't find a way reduce the nodes. As you can see, the option doesn't exist, it's grayed out.That's (IMHO) a long-standing Corel bug: even though you have shape tool active and the object selected, it will only run the reduction algorithm on selected nodes, and if none are selected, the 'reduce nodes' button isn't enabled.

[Tony Lenkic]

Bert, if you group all you only loose visibility of actual nodes but they are still there on each object.

Kev, I would use smart fill tool than delete original circles to simplify minimize node count.
If you know spacing in x & y of each do one than duplicate as many as you need but you will first need to select all text and move to another layer or move out of page with nudge offset.

[Bert Kemp]

ah ha OK I just notice when I group stuff the nodes disappear, the dodn't give me any trouble cutting at least not so far LOL

Bert, if you group all you only loose visibility of actual nodes but they are still there on each object.

Kev, I would use smart fill tool than delete original circles to simplify minimize node count.
If you know spacing in x & y of each do one than duplicate as many as you need but you will first need to select all text and move to another layer or move out of page with nudge offset.

[Glen Monaghan]

yep, lasso/drag select the nodes and then the reduce button should work.

[Kev Williams]

AHHHhh... Just boxed the whole bunch and about 2/3 of 'em are gone-- found also if I CAREFULLY slide the 'curve smoothness' bar to the right (like 1 billionth of an inch) It'll take it down to 2 or 3 nodes with no distortion...

Very nice, thanks all! :)

By the way- I did the smart fill and the other outline tool, both essentially make an exact node-for-node copy...

[Mike Null]

Why not create a new circle of the same size? A new elipse has only one node.

[Kev Williams]

Mike, that's what I did when doing the job in the pic, rather than fight it I just re-made the circles. It's just nice to know the fix when something more complicated than circles is affected!