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Flexi 10 Coming Soon

Sublimefly

New Member
Rounded corners and poor tech support

Thank you Brandon, that is a perfectly usable work around. That said its still not a fix in the software.

Now on another note back when we had 7.6 it used to crash every 25 minutes. After calling tech support and being told over and over that I needed to reinstall Windows XP Pro because 7.6 wouldn't work with my XP Pro install (no further info. just kept telling me to reinstall), I finally found someone who knew enough to look into it for me. Turned out 7.6 had a serious memory leak in the coding. So together we contacted tech support and guess what. There was not tech support by that point, the number just rang and rang. I tried contacting every SAI number we had. This was when SAI decided to move from Philly to SLC or where ever. Long story short they don't have knowledgeable techs anymore thanks to the move. Well I shouldn't say that they have one somewhere I believe. Thankfully now I have a third party tech support guy who handles SAI for us. But I have to say if they weren't almost the only company in the game I would never do business with them again. I'm sorry if I sound harsh but they have never put out a copy of flexi that wasn't full of bugs. As far as I can tell 8.5/8.6 is the first version of the software they have ever actually supported unless you count charging $900 for a simple coding fix with a couple of minor useless upgrades.

It just feels to me like they don't care when they should. They need to really think about supporting their customers better, because if another company steps into the sign design game and actually stands behind their product... Flexi will be gone inside of a year, atleast that is my guess.
 

Brandon708

New Member
Shadow effect

I had the chance to playing around with flexi 10 just now. I decided to check out the new faded shadow feature. I did some tweeking to my logo to show some of the effects you can get out of it with a little creativity. I'm sure there is more I can do but this is all for now. It's pretty easy, did all these tweeks in 15 min.

When I was using the shadow feature I noticed some lag in the program when multiple shadows are used. I even got the infamous "an unrecoverable error has occurred Flexi will be shutting down" a few times. It seems there are still thoes bugs in this program.

I know its not my computer memory or performance because this computer is a beast. I'm running Windows 7 with the i7 Processor.

top logo is the one with the effects and the bottom is the old.
 

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Sublimefly

New Member
More than a few

So all and all our owner decided to go to Flexi 10 purely for the discounted price they're running right now. I have to say its the worst upgrade yet sadly, so far it takes about double the time 8.6 did for importing and exporting, weed and split lines don't work if you cut more then one object at a time, and I keep getting the famous program has to close window only this time around, it deletes all my personal preferences when it does this.

All that aside the shadow thing is kind of neat, the only thing I like about the new flexi is the way they rearranged design manager to give you better visual information. I'm hoping that at some point in the not too distant future the support staff is able to solve some of these issues.

I'm unhappy because from a long time power users stand point all these things have been solved before. I feel like we paid close to $400 for a huge step backwards. Flexi 10 has slowed down my work flow a lot in the last few days. I'd say maybe its my install but the service tech who finally called me back after two days said he is experiencing the same issues.

All that aside SAI has the worst support service in the world as best I can tell. I was on their "Hold line" for 45 minutes on Thursday and left our second line on their hold for almost 4 hours on Friday. They play the worst 15 seconds of a song ever then it rings and back to hold, over and over till you want to kill someone or you can leave a message which will be called back by someone who doesn't even know what flexi is.

If you read my little review here, thank you and I hope it helps you make an informed decision. Sorry to everyone else for my second rant.
 

AUTO-FX

New Member
i thought it was just me, but my system is running slower with 10 installed. Seems like it's a memory hog. I may try to go back to 8.6
 

Brandon708

New Member
when I copy and paste it takes a couple seconds. Which is annoying because it used to be instant.

I hope they come out with a 10.x version with these bugs fixed.
 

Brandon708

New Member
This is what Im running it on
Intel Core i7-930 quad-core [2.8GHz, 1MB L2 + 8MB shared L3 cache]
9GB DDR3-1066MHz SDRAM [5 DIMMs]
1.5TB 7200 rpm SATA 3Gb/s hard drive
1GB ATI Radeon HD 5450

and lags and it seems as if the screen is moving like liquid at times. Its pretty weird. There should be no reason for it lagging on my machine.
 

Brandon708

New Member
On a good note I noticed that when you type text and you miss spell something it underlines it in red. I know it didn't do this in version 7.x. This is good because I sometimes forget to spell check.
 

yukon

New Member
I've upgraded from 8.6 to v10 last week, cost $400. I like the soft shadow a lot, but that's really the only notable improvement I see.
I do have an issue now with a design proof I created which included a soft shadow image. When I emailed it as a pdf, it hid all the lettering behind the image of the vehicle. I went back and made sure the vehicle was behind the lettering by "sending to back", but no matter what I did the pdf never showed the lettering. Then i tried it with other designs that didn't include a soft shadow image and it worked fine. Ultimately I had to send the proof to my customer as a jpeg.

Does anyone know what to do about this? I use the "send as pdf" everyday for my customer's proofs.

Thanks,
Yukon
 

Sublimefly

New Member
Flexi 10 issues

I recommend calling SAI and leaving a message for Customer service. I think if enough of us complain they will get on it a little faster. So far everyone I've talked to that upgraded seems to being having the same issues. I installed it on my home system which is a quad core with 8gbs of ram and an SSD. Its still insanely slow compared to the same system with 8.6. SAI screwed up and they need to get on this. Wasn't their someone from SAI on here before. I noticed she stopped posting as soon as people started complaining. That doesn't seem like a good sign to me.
 

Brandon708

New Member
Bobby is there any way to fix it from running slow? I am having the same problem. I also am having the issue if I make a transparent shadow it takes several seconds to load and what ever window is behind flexi comes to the front. Then when the shadow is done loading flexi comes back to the front of the screen.
 

CS-SignSupply

New Member
Bobby is there any way to fix it from running slow? I am having the same problem. I also am having the issue if I make a transparent shadow it takes several seconds to load and what ever window is behind flexi comes to the front. Then when the shadow is done loading flexi comes back to the front of the screen.

Flexi has always been a very memory intense application. I have experienced the same, for lack of a better word, lag in rendering with the Transparent shadow. And I am currently battling the same disappearing/reappearing window issue as you mention.

Unfortunately, I do not have a resolution for either at the moment. I have been trying to watch the processor and memory use while using this new feature. If I thought a $400+ video card would resolve the issue I would try that, but until I hear something from SAi about it...

Another thing I have an issue with is the installation time and total space used... They need to streamline the install and avoid installation of so many language files and such.
 

Brandon708

New Member
Flexi has always been a very memory intense application. I have experienced the same, for lack of a better word, lag in rendering with the Transparent shadow. And I am currently battling the same disappearing/reappearing window issue as you mention.

Unfortunately, I do not have a resolution for either at the moment. I have been trying to watch the processor and memory use while using this new feature. If I thought a $400+ video card would resolve the issue I would try that, but until I hear something from SAi about it...

Another thing I have an issue with is the installation time and total space used... They need to streamline the install and avoid installation of so many language files and such.

I have this graphics card installed in my computer - 1GB ATI Radeon HD 5450 and it still does it.
 
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