Still Trying to Learn - Corel - Centering Problem

[James & Zelma Litzmann]

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Good morning to all.

My husband does these stainless steel crosses from time to time for a gentleman and he's never had this problem until today. Could someone please tell me what it is we (HE) are doing wrong?

We run this cross on black paper to center, for a templete, vectoring the actual cross and rastering the words. Then go in and make the outline hairline then run it on the cross, now what is happening is the words are moving up when we change the red outline to black hairline . . . anybody know why? I know this is going to be something very simple that I should have thought of but it is missing me today.

Thanks in advance for any help given.

[Mike Null]

Zelma

I wasn't able to see the problem but I suspect it has to do with your outline settings. The letters are set with a .5 pt. outline and when you change it to a hairline it changes the size slightly.

can you begin with a black hairline then cange it to red or set no outline at all for rastering then set a red hairline for cutting?

Just guessing on this.

[Stephen Beckham]

Zelma,

The only thing I've seen this caused by is when using the center printing. I draw the outline to make sure I'm where I want to be, but if I don't use combined function to print it all, it will recenter on the text only causing it to no longer be centered. If you do this, don't forget to set you power on the vector to zero.

If you're not using the center function, then I'm clueless...


BTW - I've set my default power on the vector to zero - I use that darn red light way to often to have it accidentally vector for me... If forces me to set the power up when I really want to cut something..... Of course, if you're system has trickle voltages flowing, you might get a faint vector anyway....

[Mike Mackenzie]

Zelma,

I have seen times when the font moves and found out that it is caused by the WHITE space around each letter. This may be more noticeable when doing vertical text. A simple test would be to convert the font to curves and see if it changes.

[Roy Brewer]

We run this cross on black paper to center, for a templete, vectoring the actual cross and rastering the words. Then go in and make the outline hairline then run it on the cross, now what is happening is the words are moving up when we change the red outline to black hairline . . .

Turn wireframe on. Are those "D" characters messing you up? Depends on how you're sending to the laser(?).

Otherwise, if you're talking about just a tiny amount, your red lines are not quite on your black lines(?).

[James & Zelma Litzmann]

Hey thanks everyone.

We wound up doing what Stephen had suggested. We left the outline to red but dropped the power down to 1 so that it didn't hurt anything.

This still drives me crazy because we've done this same thing before and didn't have this problem, thanks to all of you we can work around it, but . . . what the cause??? I know it could be one of those things that I wake up in the middle of the night out of good sleep and automatically know what caused it . . . or it could be one of those things we never know.

Thanks again!

[James & Zelma Litzmann]

You know Mr. Brewer, I suspect that you hit the nail on the head. I don't know where the little "D"s came from but I hope they go back . . . :)

When he finishes the crosses, we'll go back and run this again and let you all know if it was the reason.

I have attached a picture of how far off it was, just fyi. The bottom one is where it would go when the red line is on and the top is where it would go when me make the red line a black hair line.

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Thanks again.

[James & Zelma Litzmann]

O.K., I would have lost that bet. That did NOT fix it???

I give.

[Scott Perry]

Could it be that your Postion Mode is set to something other than "Home" ? Located in the print driver-- General Tab--Properties-- Advanced Tab.

[James & Zelma Litzmann]

Yes, it was sent to center, ran it on the black paper, then placed the cross over it, but it resized . . . moved up.

[Mike Null]

I have to admit confusion on this but why are you running a .5 pt outline for rastering then changing it to a hairline for vectoring. Why would you not use a hairline outline or no outline to begin with then make it red?

[James & Zelma Litzmann]

When we start we leave the line a hairline red for vectoring, to leave a pattern on the paper to sit the sterling silver cross on top of, then we change the line from red for vectoring to hairline black so that it will not vector. After we change the line from red to black everything changes position. The only way we were able to work around this was to change the red hairline from hairline to .1, why does it works . . .

[Margaret Turco]

If this is a repeating order, could you make a permanent template out of acrylic for placement of the cross? I take it that the cross shape itself is pre-made. Then you could eliminate the vector lines altogether, place the cross in the template and raster only. I hope that makes sense....
I really admire the work you have shown previously on the forum!

[Mike Mackenzie]

Zelma,

I have looked at your layout and see nothing except the stray D's wrong with it. I am a little confused why you are doing it the way you stated.

Why not select and group the cross with the red vectors then select and group the text.

Now select the red and print onto the paper for your template print it as a selected object.

Now just select the text and print that as a selected object you don't have to change or add any hair lines.

[James & Zelma Litzmann]

Thanks Margaret for the compliment, we could make a templete but the crosses are hand made always vary a tad.

Mike, in theory this is suppose to work, but for us it didn't . . . this time, we didn't do exactly like this but close, we'll go back and try it again following your step by step and see if it works. We'll let you know.

Thanks everyone!

[James & Zelma Litzmann]

That did not work either, the lettering still moved up.

I know this is a very simple and I am just over looking it some how, I just wish someone could make my brain work. It has something to do with the centering and the lettering not being all the way to the top but . . .

[Stephen Beckham]

Zelma,

I'd like to give this another shot of what I think it is, try to follow my suspicions.

Look at the image below. When I select all, the image is over 5.5" tall. So when the center-center function starts printing, it's going to go up 2.75" before it starts the vector mode.

Once you change the hairline, then it is removed from the calculation for center-center print. The text alone (all that is calculated in the raster print) is only 4.6" tall. So it will only go up 2.3" to start printing. Even though it doesn't go as high in the calculation, it has less no spacing at the top and starts printing the text immediately at a point that is physically higher on the cross.

Is that clear as mud?


______ EDIT ______

Just for giggles, I moved the text up so when it was selected and the center point is close to where the other center point is, look at the second screen shot and see where the letters fall in relation to the cross - then look back at your sample you posted of the error... Close?

[James & Zelma Litzmann]

Thanks Stephen, yes very close. Yes this is exactly what happens. We were able to work around it and got the job done but it sure puzzled us.