A Corel Draw like program for the Mac?

[William Adams]

Typically it’s a vector / Bézier file, esp.for cutting out outlines (though some CAM workflows for lasers will accept the more typical .dxf).

There are also programs which will accept raster / pixel images so as to do greyscale images.

[Bill George]

My current laser a ULS, uses a Print Driver interface. In the Driver software you can designate certain colors to do different functions. For example I have Red (hairline width) set to do vector cutting at a much higher power and lower speed to do material cutting, such as cork or wood. I have Black set to do Raster engraving at a certain power, speed and frequency. So by changing colors in the design you can pretty much do anything. Corel also lets me do dithered black and white images that look pretty darn good on wood or even granite.

[Dave Hutton]

I'd second the option of using parallels (or the other one - whose name I forget) its not much money to install. Obviously the idea of buying a mac is to go with mac programs but as we have discovered that's not always an option.

I have windows XP and 8.1 running under parallels with no problem (one at a time mind) and swap between programs/ OS easily seamlessly (most of the time :-)

I have just installed Corel X6 and that appears to work easily under 8.1

I also had problems getting printer drivers for some of my printers (quite new ones as well) and gave up in the end.

My two cents worth

DJ

[William Adams]

Other options:

http://www.sketchapp.com/
http://www.application-systems.co.uk/lineform/
http://al.chemy.org/download/
http://www.vpaint.org/