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any Signlab 8 users here?

gabagoo

gabagoo

New Member
I just want to know who I can private message for help. lol

I was basically forced to move from Signlab 5 (which I know inside out) to Signlab 8, and I am having trouble trying to figure out certain operations and shortcuts. heck, just trying to figure out how to inset a decorative border almost put me in the emergency room~~
 
sardocs

sardocs

New Member
We recently jumped from Signlab 3 to SignLab VinylPro 7.1. Seems If we had waited about one month we would have gotten ver8. We should have waited for 8. It was released right after we made our purchase. We used to use Signlab for design as well as cutting. Now we have to design in Corel and use Signlab for cutting only . I can't get Signlab to do hardly anything that we used to be able to do. It seems way more complicated than it needs to be. I expected a learning curve, but we got a learning cliff...
 
David Wright

David Wright

New Member
sardocs said:
We recently jumped from Signlab 3 to SignLab VinylPro 7.1. Seems If we had waited about one month we would have gotten ver8. We should have waited for 8. It was released right after we made our purchase. We used to use Signlab for design as well as cutting. Now we have to design in Corel and use Signlab for cutting only . I can't get Signlab to do hardly anything that we used to be able to do. It seems way more complicated than it needs to be. I expected a learning curve, but we got a learning cliff...
Click to expand...


Why upgrade just to cut and not design also. Any bridge program from Corel would do as much and way cheaper.
 
gabagoo

gabagoo

New Member
I seriously spent almost an hour trying to figure out how to do an inset border. When I found someone who told me how I was shocked and never would have figured it out if left on my own.
I guess i could use the help menus but i find those frustrating too.

I had my older computer still set up to be able to run 5 if need be, but something weird happened and I had to reinstall it last week and now as the program is loading, when it starts to load the vef fonts it kaks out and shuts down and it wont run at all.
I now have no choice but to work in 8, until I can figure out why 5 refuses to work now.
Naturally there is no support for 5 and understandable.

2 weeks and I be back to high speed layouts....I hope!!!!
 
JR's

JR's

New Member
Gabagoo, I'm a signlab8 P&C user to. I still don't know how to do inset a decorative border. but you could PM me all you want and I will do my best to help were I can.

JR
 
gabagoo

gabagoo

New Member
OK a couple of simple items that I have not quite figured out.

1) When using the dimension tool you used to right click to change font size and other attributes. That dont seem to work anymore so where do you go to set this up


2) When I cut vinyl I want the cutter to cut everything along the y axis as it enters the plotter so that you dont get that back and forth movement which wastes so much time and can set the skew off on long runs. I see it in the cut dialogue box and have tried both horizontal and vertical but cant get it to cut the same way as I had it set in version 5. the plotter is still moving all over the place. I see some secondary items you can click like sort within paragraph and show sort numbers
 
signage

signage

New Member
In the plot defaults in the options box you need to select sort and then in the next dialog box select nearest.
 
gabagoo

gabagoo

New Member
OK Guys thanks.....Got those two figured out now.......

This is a little minor but I am a kerning freak. I remember version 5 had auto kerning and did a very good job of it. Now I see everything looks a little crappy in the kerning department... I know I can do it manually but what ever happened to auto kerning...is it still there but I have no knowledge how to access it or is it gone?
 
gabagoo

gabagoo

New Member
one more thing..... I like to put weed boxes around cut vinyl.... Is it necessary to have to always hit the apply button? what a waste of time.... Can I make a weed border a hot key and by pass the APPLY option? You would think the idea is to make the software faster...in this case I now have to make 2 commands when it used to be one.
 
S

schmitty

New Member
tried to upload a snap shot, but didnt work out.

But it's the button with the 'a a' next to the hard kerning numbers.

Also, you can hold down <CTR> and double click on the line of text and it will pop up the kerning nodes.

Good Luck!
 
gabagoo

gabagoo

New Member
schmitty said:
tried to upload a snap shot, but didnt work out.

But it's the button with the 'a a' next to the hard kerning numbers.

Also, you can hold down <CTR> and double click on the line of text and it will pop up the kerning nodes.

Good Luck!
Click to expand...


Thanks for the double click option, but I found that version 5 did a much nicer natural kerning in just about all fonts. Now I am seeing at 100% kerning what I see in other softwares like illy and corel, just to much damn space. I guess at this point in the learning curve I dont have the time to mess around with it, but it would be nice if there was an auto function like before without having to press hit or do anything outside of type text.
 
sardocs

sardocs

New Member
Thanks Schmitty for the ctrl doubleclick tip. That's a time saver. Dave Wright - The reason we got the vinyl only version is we have a computer dedicated to the plotter and a separate, networked computer for the printer. I've used Signlab since it was a dos program in the days before windows or inkjet existed. After windows came along I got Corel from the beginning too. When I upgraded my way up to Signlab ver 3.something or other, I just stuck with it until last year. I use corel 12 on its own computer for design and printing.
 
C

CentralSigns

New Member
sardocs said:
The reason we got the vinyl only version is we have a computer dedicated to the plotter and a separate, networked computer for the printer. I use corel 12 on its own computer for design and printing.
Click to expand...

Kind of the same setup here as Sardocs. Corel and Versaworks to printer. Separate cutter on it's own computer with SignLab8. Is it worth the $1200 they want for the for print and cut upgrade? I just upgraded to the SignLab Vinyl 8 from 7.7 in June. Kind of wish I would have done it all at that time.
 
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