Vector cutting text

[Ian Malings]

i want to vector cut arial text in corel.
can anyone help me figure this out?

i need to create a stamped, or die cut look in thin plastic.

thx
ian

[George M. Perzel]

Hi Ian;
Write your text in Corel, make it the size you want, set outline width to "hairline", no fill-cut away!!
Good Luck
George

[Ian Malings]

thanks for the tip George-
i got that far on my own, the problem is that it creates two hairline outlines, and on letters like b, p, e, the middle portion in knocked out.
am i not doing this correctly>
i want it to have only one hairline, thus enabling me to get the die cut effect.

i thought it would be a simple task, but .....

[Joe Pelonio]

Ian,

George was right, if you entered the text in Corel, select it, set outline to hairline, set fill to X (none) and away you go. This was not an imported file from another program, was it?

[George M. Perzel]

Ian;
I've tried everything to duplicate your problem and can"t. Is the text being created in Corel? Sorry- you got me on this one.
Good Luck
George

[Ian Malings]

i just realized that what i'm trying to do can't be done.....

d'oh!!!

thx for the input guys

- anyway to remove stupid questions from this forum??
:D

[Joe Pelonio]

Duh or not, now we just have to know what you did and why it can't be done, so fess up!

[Dick Morgan]

You may have 2 layers. also, change the inside lines to .5 this may stop the drop out.

[David Harvey]

I do this a lot with no problem. Just create your text, select Hairline and turn 'off 'Fill for the text. Now, if you select 'Covert Outline to Object'...you will get a 2nd hairline as you described...and with some fonts, if you select 'Covert to Curves', the centers of the letters as you described will fill in. In this case all you have to do is to select the center of the letter and change the fill to your background color, ie., white... usually in my case.

David

[Barbara Buhse]

ok, I'm trying to follow this post since I think this is the very same question I was having...
I want to cut out a word, only the OUTline, not the "holes" in the letters... is this what you guys are talking about here?
Can you explain more about converting the text to "curves" or to an "object"?

Barbara

[Joe Pelonio]

What you are trying to do, I think, Barbara, is what I do to make mounting templates for cut acrylic letters. I use polytag (coated paper) and cut the word out but no need for the "centers" which would be wasting time to cut. What I do is enter the word, do hairline outline, do no fill, then convert to curves, break curves apart, ungroup, then delete the
centers individually.

When you convert to objects rather than paths the letters take on the characteristics of a box or circle rather than just being vectors. That may be appropriate for certain functions but for just cutting may cause problems.

[Lee DeRaud]

ok, I'm trying to follow this post since I think this is the very same question I was having...
I want to cut out a word, only the OUTline, not the "holes" in the letters... is this what you guys are talking about here?
Can you explain more about converting the text to "curves" or to an "object"? Ok, let's say you have a chunk of 'Artistic Text' (as opposed to 'Paragraph Text').
1. Select it.
2. Under the 'Arrange' menu, click on 'Convert To Curves' (or just type cntrl-Q). That will leave you with all the text as a single curve...if it includes letters with "holes" (like 'o' or 'b'), that will be a complex (multi-segment) curve.
3. Under the 'Arrange' menu, click on 'Break Curve Apart' (cntrl-K). That will yield a bunch of objects, e.g. the word "Foobar" will become 10 objects, one for each letter, plus one for each hole.
4. The holes can now be selected and deleted, just like any other objects.
This works regardless of fill or outline colors.

[Thomas Hempleman]

Here's another quick and dirty way to remove the centers of text. As noted above, type in your text and set the outline to hairline width and the color needed to signify vector cut (usually red). Set the fill color to "X". Now, with the text selected, click on the "break apart" icon or press Ctrl-K (it does the same thing) which will break down the sentence you typed into the component words. Select the word and again click on "break apart" or press Ctrl-K. The word will be broken down into the component letters. At this point, the letters and words still retain their text characteristics. You can still edit the text, change typestyles, sizes, etc just like you do with any text. You can even drag the individual letters around, stretch them or whatever. Now you can take things a step further. Click on a letter with a center section (like "O" or "P"). Click on the "quick weld" icon. then on the "break apart" (Ctrl-K) icon. The center section of the letter will now be disconnected from the main outline of the letter. You can move, resize or delete the individual parts just like they were shapes. In fact, that's what they are now. Once you break a text letter apart, it is no longer text and can't be edited. But up until this point, the letter is text and can be edited. If you break apart a lower case "i", you can move the dot around or delete it completely.

[Chris Cordina]

One last take on the problem. I change the words to curves as described in the other posts but then make little bridges so the middle of the letters like o won't fall out, or use fonts like freedom 9 thin (there are only a few) that don't have that problem.

[Keith Outten]

Some fonts can be converted to curves then nudge each letter untill they touch and weld them together. You can then vector cut your text.

[Barbara Buhse]

yes yes yes... you all have hit the nail on the head... these are exactly the things I wanted to do, so thanks...
Keith, what you said about nudging them together, thats what I've been trying to accomplish. Now with everyone's help I think I've got it!

Barbara

[J Porter]

Nudging is a great tool but I very seldom use it for this purpose. I prefer to draw a thin rectangle below the letters, just so they cross over a small bit. Then do a weld.

Like Keith said about fonts, this only looks good with certain fonts. I like Baloon xbd dt, Baloonist and Bankgothic LT BT because they don't have descenders which get in the way.

The small rectangle under the letters can be expanded to provide mounting.

[Ian Malings]

wow- got lot's of help on this one-

thx guys

joe- what i was trying to do was create two samples for my client, one w/ the text engraved into the styrene sheet, and the other w/ the text stamped out of the sheet, but after thinking about it, the centers of the p's and e's, and b's would all be lost no matter what i tried to do.
that's a newbie for you!

ian

[Roy Brewer]

i need to create a stamped, or die cut look in thin plastic.

I think Barbara is right. You need a Stencil font; there are several in Corel library or unlimited varities on the Internet, or if you really the Arial font, create a rectangular "cookie cutter" and make your own "stencils."

[George M. Perzel]

Hi All;
Many ways to skin a cat (probably shouldn't say that anymore in fear of alienating the animal rights activists!).
Type your text in Corel, choose your font and size, then, under Arrange, use Break Artistic text apart. Now you can move or play with each letter however you want. You can also Convert each letter to curves and make small adjustments to parts of any letter to make them link together better or widen a section.
See attachment for example-GO LIONS!!!
George

[Joe Pelonio]

Ian,

I don't know if this would work for your client but what comes out really nice is to cut out the letters, as you were trying to do, then stick the
material with letters removed onto another piece with contrasting color. Then glue on the centers. Try this some time, for a really nice job, I did a bunch of these for a medical imaging office, some were large and real busy and profitable. They are 1/16 acylic on wilsonart laminate on 1/4" acrylic, all laser cut.
http://members.aol.com/bisjoe/restrm.jpg

[Lee DeRaud]

...what comes out really nice is to cut out the letters, as you were trying to do, then stick the material with letters removed onto another piece with contrasting color. Then glue on the centers. Try this some time, for a really nice job, I did a bunch of these for a medical imaging office, some were large and real busy and profitable. They are 1/16 acylic on wilsonart laminate on 1/4" acrylic, all laser cut.That looks slick. What's the preferred glue for that combination?

[Joe Pelonio]

Normally you'd use contact cement for laminate but it's EXTREMELY flammable, and the water based is not so good. While I can cut thru laminate and 1/4" acrylic at once it seems easier to cut each then glue together. For the laminate to the acrylic I use a few small pieces of the very thin clear ds tape then E6100 adhesive applied by plastic squeegie.
It's made by Eclectic products Inc., I buy it from a local plastic place. For the lettering, I apply either the 3m laminating film or strips of "banner tape" to the back before cutting, then just peel the back with tweezers
and no worry about glue squeezing out onto the laminate. When doing a lot of them the same I laser cut a mounting template from polytag. On a small one like this I just cut a box around the letters the same size as the
laminate and use that for a template, still not much waste.

[Alan Young]

Here is what I do . Create some text. Then size to around the size you want. Click on the node edit tool and some different handles will appear below the text. Take the one found under the right side of the text and slide it towards the other. Usually about the width on one of the characters. This will bring the letters closer together. Then break text apart (ctl k) and then move each letter closer until they over lap some. Then weld them together. You might then need to break the curves apart and move any thing down like the dot on an "i" and re weld. The key here is after you move whatever to select all the objects and do a combine and then re weld. If you do not you will loose the middle of the letters like in a "B" Hope this helps.
If for some reason you want to keep the text as text and still want them to weld together, is to get them to overlap as above and then do a contour to the outside of about .005 and then break the contour apart and you will have something that is pretty close to a weld.

Alan

[Ian Malings]

thx again joe for the ideas- this application is not quite what i was trying to achieve, but the idea is great and the signage is excellent

[Garry Winterton]

This is what i do using corel 12, cant do it in 10 or not as easily
i select all my text and using outline box i select the sizing box and type in it .005 mm
This gives me a vector outline around all my text.
this i select the box tool and set it to all white fill and outline.
i then draw a thin white box through all letters with a centre ie a's o's 9's p's etc.
once i have done that i select all the text and all those little white box's
i the go the arrange - shaping and select simlify.
all the the text is converted to a object except where the white box's were.
you now have a stencil with tags of that text.
delete all the white box's.

you can vector cut your stencil dont raster.
cut all the way through give it shake and all the letters drop out.

i use this for transferable sandblast stencils once i have stuck my stencil down i cut out the tags with a sharp knife. no weeding.

If previous reply turns up sorry my bad:rolleyes:

[Jerry Allen]

Here's a font I created for you folks.
The attachement is .zip because the site would not allow a .ttf upload. So unzip and install it.
Note that the upper and lower case versions have different spacing. I.E., the upper case has wider spacing (2nd row).
As mentioned previously, you can still convert to curves and move fonts around. I would only use this font for cutout lettering.

[Chris Cordina]

Thanks, I haven't found many nice fonts where centers don't fal out. Chris

[Bob Tate]

That font is pretty slick. I think I will find a lot of uses for it. I thank you for your donation. Very generous of you.

Bob

[Jerry Allen]

You're both welcome.
Let me know how it works and if there should be thicker "bridges". I created the font on the fly yesterday. I did use the A yesterday and it is fine, but the D and B might be a little flimzy. I was using double horizontal bridges on every letter by using Draw and creating the letters pretty much as mentioned herein. Gets a little old creating them every time. I think the single bridge is somewhat more attractive.