Lets see X3 Trace work

[Pete Simmons]

Here is a logo I am working on for a sample.


I did a conversion in Ver 12 trace. It is fair but needs a lot of help to be useable.


How about someone doing this with X3 trace and lets see how good that is.

Yes getting this into vector form will help me get this sample out but more so seeing X3 trace work well will maybe push me and others over the edge to go and buy X3.

[George M. Perzel]

Hi Pete;
here ya go-quick trace
Wood shipped this morning.
Best regards;
George
LaserArts

[Pete Simmons]

Wow that was fast but maybe it is still in Ver X3 format.

V 12 will not open it.

[George M. Perzel]

Hi Pete;
Sorry-not thinking clearly. Of course you don't have X3, duh
Here it is in Corel 12
george

[Frank Corker]

Hi Guys, I've just had a look at this myself, the problem you have with the trace on this one Pete is that the original image is very small for trace and it's dirty. The yellow in the image has been shaded outwards (blended) and because the image is so small the pixel spread is poor.

I have increased the size and removed the fuzziness from it but I no longer have Corel 12 on my computer, so try this one attached - Perhaps Pete can try it in Corel 12 it should trace a lot better

Frank

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=50247&d=1163759078

[Mitchell Andrus]

Frank,

As you "Save as" in X3, you'll see a small drop-down box at the right side of the "save as" dialog box. There, you may select the Draw version that you want the file to be saved as. (8:00 in the morning style grammar - sheesh) I only have X3 but I've sent V11, 12 files just fine.

Mitch

[Pete Simmons]

Looks great and thanks.


Now where to buy and how much is a good price for X3 full install?

[Dave Jones]

If you have a previous version, just get the X3 upgrade. It's a lot cheaper.

[Pete Simmons]

I also want the hardcopy book with all the images.

Easier to look through when searching for an image.

Does the book come with the upgrade?

[Steve McKee]

Pete, having recently purchased X3 myself the best price I found was at Software King. http://www.softwareking.com/miva/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=CDX3RB&Category_Code=CO

Steve

[James Leonard]

Hi, I am using academic copies of both V12 and X3. You can get X3 AND an intro to X3 class at LVS online. The class costs $25, the CorelDraw including shipping straight from Corel's online store is $115. Registering at LVS makes you a legitimate student so nothing even slightly shady here.

No books, just the four CDs which have all the docs anyways.

http://www.lvsonline.com

I have no relationship with these folks other than as a consumer of their classes.

-James Leonard

[Frank Corker]

Frank,

As you "Save as" in X3, you'll see a small drop-down box at the right side of the "save as" dialog box. There, you may select the Draw version that you want the file to be saved as. (8:00 in the morning style grammar - sheesh) I only have X3 but I've sent V11, 12 files just fine.

Mitch


Jeesh Mitch, thanks, live and learn hey. Cool

[Aaron Koehl]

Given the small size of that logo, I could recreate it in under 60 seconds using the three-point curve tool (available since Corel 12). I think the gradient might throw off the trace.

The laser is pretty forgiving of the extra nodes, but the ShopBot definitely is not.

[Keith Outten]

I also want the hardcopy book with all the images.

Easier to look through when searching for an image.

Does the book come with the upgrade?

Pete,

Yes, the books come with the X3 upgrade, at least they did with mine.

.

[Mike Null]

The books came with my upgrade as well. If you don't have the clip art book I don't know how you could find any of the clipart because their is no way to catalog it.

On versions before 11 you could use romcat to catalog the files on your pc.

[Ron Moorehead]

http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite?c=Content_C1&cid=1163521309213&lc=en&pagename=CorelCom%2FLayout&trkid=nrcfall06


On Corel web site their are offering 30% off all product right now. You can get a Box upgrade for $125.00.

[Dave Jones]

I use ThumbsPlus to catalog the clipart discs. It's a lot easier to flip through the book, but with ThumbsPlus I see much larger thumbnails of the images, so have a better idea of what I'm looking at. The quality of the thumbs isn't perfect, but close enough for me to locate images I want to open in Corel and examine closer.

[Tom Caudle]

Auto trace with any package is always a trade-off if you want something that is going to cut well (smooth curves with minimum nodes). The lower the bitmap resolution the worse the auto trace will be.

After many tries we found that the simple stuff auto-traces pretty well but still needs some human interaction. Complex bitmaps do poorly. By the time you either clean up the bitmap to get rid of color sweeps and other things you can setup a new layer in CorelDraw and using the vector tools hand trace and get exactly what you want. Since simple stuff hand traces faster than complex even that becomes a toss-up. That logo could be done by hang and get perfect curves in less than 30 minutes.

X3 has better auto trace than 12 (but not that much better). There are dozens of other packages from free to hundreds of dollars. I have tried a lot of them and if minimal nodes is your goal (the Shopbot software does not support CV (constant velocity) so lots of nodes make it jerk like a spastic rabbit) then hand tracing may be the only salvation..

Tom Caudle
CandCNC