best way to eliminate unwanted cut lines in X3?

[tryplecrown]

Well, I've been a CorelDraw user for over 10 years and since I recently entered the sign biz recently, I haven't had a need to go in to wireframe view and get rid of all of the lines you can't see. Of course in screen printing, it doesn't matter when outputting film, but now I'm having to take the designs I've been designing for screen printing and set them up for cutting.

In particular, I have a design that I was just looking at and was contemplating the best way to go about it. Is the easiest way to just convert everything (including outlines) to curves and start welding things together and trim out the negative space using the trim command?

I didn't know if there was an easier way to go about this. Below is an image of a design I'm working with and the wireframe view in it's original state. You can see all of the unwanted lines in the wireframe.

Thanks in advance for the tips!

 

[Kottwitz-Graphics]

first thought is you have some double lines in the boarder that you don't need. Break it all apart, and start deleting.

Then you will want to weld the overlaps, and you should be pretty much done.

 

[jiarby]

you about nailed it...
break apart, weld, delete, clean up. repeat!

you may have some luck with "create boundary" and then "back minus front" and "convert outline to object"

either was it'll be slightly tedious

 

[gnemmas]

Under Arrange, "convert outline to object".

 

[Seraphime]

The way I see this there are two ways to do this:
1. Convert the vector image to bitmap, with a high resolution. The trace it. But you will have a lot of nodes, and not very much accuracy.
2. Take the long road and walk it. Convert the outlines to curves, delete the inside contour, combine the text with the white background that came out of the curve conversion. The keep welding and combining. No need for trims, combining objects does the same trick as trim. But you need to delete those contour objects inside "GUMMY'S" and "BBQ". You will end up with only one object, white coloured, and the black background.
Good luck

 

[jiarby]

I had an idea...

blow it up big, then convert to bitmap...

Then do an auto trace.

 

[Kottwitz-Graphics]

I had an idea...

blow it up big, then convert to bitmap...

Then do an auto trace.

I disagree. You will loose too much detail. You already have it in vector, why go throught all that trouble. If I were willing to go through that much trouble, I'd export it as eps, and do it in CasMate, but your just as well to do it in corel

Slightly tedious...I think it would only take me about 15 min at the most.

 

[Seraphime]

And one more thing...if you have a lot of nodes after converting to curves, select the all and set the curve smoothness an 1. It will auto-reduce the nodes, but it's not always the best option, because you might loose some details

 

[tryplecrown]

Wow, didn't expect to get that many tips that fast. Thanks for the info. I figured manually welding everything together was the way to go.

But for some reason, I always hold out hope that there is a plug in or something that will work some magic. Since I went through some of Tom Knight's Advanced Artist training for CorelDraw and got some of the plug-ins he recommends, I've definitelyl jumped on the plug-in wagon. I specifically LOVE the Oberon color replacer plug-in. I can't tell you how many times a day I use that thing to convert colors in a design in a matter of seconds. It saves SOOOOO much time, especially setting up film for screen printing and setting up design comps.

Thanks again everyone! You're awesome.

 

[Air Art Girl]

OK, here is the REAL EASY way to do this. Make sure it is converted to curves. Then use the vertual segment delete tool. It's in the crop tool fly out. Put the cut tool curser on the line you want to remove and left click, it will delete the line. Repeat for every line you want to take out.

 

[tryplecrown]

OK, here is the REAL EASY way to do this. Make sure it is converted to curves. Then use the vertual segment delete tool. It's in the crop tool fly out. Put the cut tool curser on the line you want to remove and left click, it will delete the line. Repeat for every line you want to take out.

Thanks for that one. I spend almost all day every day in CorelDraw and I never noticed that tool so that's a really good one to see.

I have learned one thing that I can pass along to those that are just starting to design for cutting vinyl. I used to use the countour tool all the time. You'll notice the original design above where I have the floating contours around the BBQ and some of the other items. But I recently started doing a lot of design for print and web and began using the outline tool more because I seemed to have more control (including being able to round off all of the corners). But I've realized now that when I'm setting up a design for cutting, it seems to work better to use the contour tool. The reason I say this is that when you break the countour off of the object you can use the trim or back minus front tool easily. When I try this with an outline (convert outline to object and then try to use the main object to trim out the outline) it doesn't seem to work. It's almost like it welds them together instead of trimming. I've tried all different methods trying to figure it out, but it kiss me. I've put many a red spot on my face by banging it on my desk trying to make it work. Just doesn't (for me at least).

But this virtual segment delete tool definitely makes things easier. Thanks for the heads up on that one. Great tip!

 

[Air Art Girl]

you are welcome!!