casmate pro allternative

[foxontop]

hi there at the moment i use casmate pro , but its getting a little old now with no support , is there any software that is similar to use , so not to put tp much stress on the old grey mater ? any help would be much appreciated

 

[CW Graphix]

Fred should be able to help you out on this! I do believe Scanvac bought out Casmate or something to that nature!

Chris

 

[player]

Flexisign Pro has a Casmate screen set-up.

P

 

[Fred Weiss]

Fred should be able to help you out on this! I do believe Scanvac bought out Casmate or something to that nature!

Chris

Scanvec was the original developer of CasMate. They bought out Amiable Technologies a while back who created FlexiSign. The new company, Scanvec-Amiable International now offers only FlexiSign which, as mentioned does have a workspace that emulates the old CasMate product.

Historical note: The only reason CasMate ever came to market was the bankruptcy of a US company that was supposed to bring their technology to market under a license for it. The original product from Scanvec was the first genuinely good autotracing program. After the bankruptcy, Scanvec simply built other modules around the autotracing until they had a full package and named it CasMate.

 

[signguy95]

I switched from Casmate Pro to FlexiSign Pro years ago, and It was an almost seemless switch. When I bought the software from JSI, they included training so I took advantage of it...but it seemed like as they taught me the basics of Flexisign Pro, I already knew how to do it.

Jay

 

[iSign]

I was such a casmate addict that I went for a nice crossgrade price to pick up a copy of Flexi Sign Pro... but then I left it gathering dust on the shelf for years afterwords & still just used casmate. Fred had to encourage me to discover what a good program it was when I'd make that confession over the years. I finally made the switch. I wouldn't call it seamless... but Flexi comes with the same fonts that were used on my previous 8 years worth of Casmate files, and it can open those old files... which was valuable at first, though not so often anymore.

 

[Sign Works]

I Went from Casmate to Inspire to Flexi, although I run Flexi on several systems I still do most of my basic layouts in Inspire, after using Inspire for quite some time I got very efficent with it, especially with path editing. Being a one man shop dosent leave a lot of time to master new software but I do find many uses for Flexi such as Running my PC-600 and applying contour cuts to files for the Versacamm (much easier for me than doing it in Corel or Illustrator). I actually wouldn't mind locating a copy of Inspire XP but havn't come across it anywhere. Anybody else still find the simplicity of Inspire to be more efficent for them as well?

 

[Jack]

I originally started using Casmate, Then when Inspire was developed I acquired a copy and have been using since Scanvec quit supporting inspire an bought an upgrade to Flexisign pro, all three programs are excellent and still use all three daily. in fact Casmate is the only one that I can run my Meistergram engraving machines with

 

[Chuck Osborne]

A buddy of mine upgraded from Casmate to Flexi and he had
to return his casmate lock to the dealer. Did any of you?

 

[signguy95]

I had to return my serial key for a usb key. I could have had the software coded for the serial key , but seeing how everything is usb, I decided to change.

As for fonts, You can install all the Casmate fonts and use them with Flexi. You must copy the casmate fonts to the "Casmate Fonts" folder in the Flexi program folder.

Jay

 

[RJ California]

I did a crossgrade "upgrade" from Gerber Omega to Flexi and I was allowed to keep my Gerber software key. That would have been a dealbreaker back then if they had wanted my Omega key. Not now --- Flexi is great.

 

[iSign]

A buddy of mine upgraded from Casmate to Flexi and he had
to return his casmate lock to the dealer. Did any of you?

nope, mine was considered a "crossgrade" also, & I kept my key.


Signguy95, whate software are you talking about moving from serial to usb? Not Casmate are you? I never knew of them having a USB key, did they?

Signworks, I got a copy of Inspire, & attended a training seminar... but I never got into learning it. Still got it though...books, dongle...discs... I probably should sell it.

 

[signedmylifeaway]

I Went from Casmate to Inspire to Flexi, although I run Flexi on several systems I still do most of my basic layouts in Inspire, after using Inspire for quite some time I got very efficent with it, especially with path editing. Being a one man shop dosent leave a lot of time to master new software but I do find many uses for Flexi such as Running my PC-600 and applying contour cuts to files for the Versacamm (much easier for me than doing it in Corel or Illustrator). I actually wouldn't mind locating a copy of Inspire XP but havn't come across it anywhere. Anybody else still find the simplicity of Inspire to be more efficent for them as well?

I believe Inspire XP was a illegal modification of Inspire and they no longer produce it because it was basically theft of someone else's work.

 

[Sign Works]

I believe Inspire XP was a illegal modification of Inspire and they no longer produce it because it was basically theft of someone else's work.

That would possibly explain why it just disappeared. I am much faster designing with Inspire than stumbling through Flexi and would like to get Inspire onto an XP system but I've heard that it dosen't work correctly on XP. I actually have Inspire & Flexi running on a Windows 98 system both using the same serial key (Inspire key). It was when Scanvec & Amiable first merged and they allowed me to upgrade to Flexi for a couple hundred bucks due to the instability of Inspire, they told me to just to use the old Inspire key for Flexi, works with both programs.

Speaking of keys I have an interesting story I'll share. When I built my first XP system (when XP was first released) I purchased a second site license for Flexi (basically $1,500 for a USB key) which I believe was manufactured by Aladdin. The computer acted very strange, would boot into system bios set-up sayin that the "system hung due to an improper cpu speed setting". This problem baffled my computer tech that built the system, as well as the folks at AMD, ASUS and several computer service centers here in Sacramento. The best part is that in the 18 month diagnostic period of what the problem might be there occured 2 fried processors and 3 mother boards and still noone could figure out the problem until one day I just unplugged the key and presto, it worked fine. Turns out Aladdin released the new USB keys with a defective driver that would load into the system bios chip set and cause all kinds of havoc, no apology or compensation from SAI , was simply told to go to Aladdin's site and download the corrected driver. Problem solved, puter still works fine.

 

[signguy95]

ISign, Yeah I was going from Casmate (serial) to Flexi (USB). But I actually kept my serial when I first upgraded so that I could run Casmate & Flexi. I had a problem with some files not wanting to act right. The next upgrade I got I purchased the USB and returned the serial.

Jay

 

[ejgemstone]

Here's a note. A company in canada called safekey international will copy your key and write a software driver for it. No need to use the key anymore. I agree that inspire is great for vector cleanup and still use it as well. Same company wrote a patch to let me use it in XP. If it crashes no more reboot. yeah!!!