I'm likely talking into the wind since I've only run into 2 other people on this board that uses Lasersoft to drive their Chinese machine, but oh well...
I did some research last night and found there's been several upgrades since my last upgrade. I've been using 7.01, and downloaded 7.11...
Upon test driving it I found some great improvements, like the outline function makes a nice smooth true-to-life outline now. Before, outlining an "0" a bit to thicken it up resulted in a 8 sided 'oval' with no curves. Now it seems to work great! -- Except for: the software for some reason doesn't know the difference between the inner oval and the outer oval when outlining, which means both ovals expand the same direction. So while I can make that 0 way bigger, the stroke width never changes... Not sure if there's an inner/outer sort function I'm missing...
Also nicer is the zoom works WAY faster, as does the whole program in general. There's also a nifty 'data detection' function that will find unclosed lines, overlaps, intersections, etc... however, it seems to do a much better job of finding open graphics than Corel does-- and this means, graphics that would 'paint' exactly the same way in Lasersoft as they did in Corel, now they don't.
To wit: This spade I laser etch regularly. The one on the left is correct, and how it always came into the old program. However, to get this one to paint correctly, I had to export and import it back into Corel as a DXF before sending it to Lsoft. The one on the right how it now paints the original spade, because the program says it's found MANY open lines- 44 actually...
spade1.jpg
The 'find and close lines function does seem to work, and at first glance looks fine, but it's not because it welded 2 pieces across the universe from each other rather than the ones right next door. (Corel does the same thing so no surprise)...
spade2.jpgspade3.jpg
Before the connection and fill, this is what shows up in Lsoft where the line starts, upper left-
spade4.jpg
But this is that same area (zoomed WAY in) as shown in Corel- I'm actually a bit lower on the arc here, but--
spade5.jpg
--- notice the grizzled looking artifacts at various places on the line. And as I noted above, the hole-finder says there's 44 holes in this graphic- would those 'holes' be these 'artifacts'? When working with the shape tool, moving the lines or nodes sometimes-sometimes not- will cause the artifacts to disappear. But they don't act like a bunch of folded-over lines either. To the shape tool they don't exist. It's like the computer is drawing phantom black specks, but Lasersoft obviously considers them something else! To the credit of Lsoft, it did seem to close all the holes- just not correctly.
So, between typing this post I tried to download a simple logo I use regularly into the new Lsoft but it won't paint it correctly no matter what I try. Even the export-import trick wouldn't work. Best I could muster is a Picasso-looking mess where half of every shape and character is painted and half is just outlined...
But this issue brings up another issue I've had with Corel for a long time, which is that many closed graphics (meaning they'll fill) that I work with cannot be outlined. The outline/weld icons simply don't appear when selecting the graphic or individual segment. I found that with this spade, NONE of the closed segments can be outlined. Nor can any parts of the logo I had trouble with. This tells me that Corel is likely considering the artifacts as unclosed holes too-- which begs the question: Why won't Corel outline such segments even though it will fill them correctly?
Anyway, after more playing around with the new program, I ended up uninstalling it. The grief of nothing filling right won't make up for the few improvements...
Not sure anyone can help, this is more of a rant that I thought some of you might find interesting...
It's too bad, because Lasersoft actually has a lot of cool features, most of which I'm actually figuring out, some of which even make sense!
-- If they could only get it to actually work right
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