flexi"s"catch"

[GARY CULY]

o.k. heres my question ..not being real computer savvy ive wondered for some time about the files that i send to my printer....where do they go? just to the printer then gone? OR does my computer "copy?" the file,send it to computer and leave it on there in a folder someplace?
ive went into flexi program and found a "temp" folder ..and seen a lot of small shortcut files and deleted them bout every couple weeks ..then in in my documents folder there is a "recent document "folder that has quite a lot .i delete them frequently also ...is there a place where there is a lot of files piling up slowing down computer? can somepne take a minute and explain how the process.

thanks for your help..G

 

[SignTech]

Gary ................ r u saving your files into a folder (customer folder) when you are done creating them and then sending them to print or cut?

If you are creating something on your computer and you don't save it and just send it to print, when you are done printing, if you close the program the file will be lost.

Yes temp files are created but without saving a physical copy it will be gone when you go for it later. Usually all printers including your desk top paper printer and cutters have a computer chip inside that stores the file for the next print ........ I am not positive on Digital UV printers but again when your computer is turned off or printer or cutter etc ...... these will get dumped ........ you have to "SAVE AS" your files to keep the file active so you can pull it up next time and use it again. If you save files even if the temp file is deleted ......... you still have your file in a folder. If not it's gone.

Although some computer gurus will argue that everything stays on the hard drive ........ and they might b right.

 

[John L]

Gary, i am no expert. But somewhere in there (Production Manager) it does say something about "delete file after print/plot". Not sure if it actually does delete, but it says so. I remember seeing it but dont know where to direct you.... and stop trying to print porn.

 

[Barber]

Gary in Production Manager double click on Job Properties and at the top pick the center icon about half way down you will find what you are looking fir.

 

[iSign]

So, I think you are clear on saving your work, so that is not the question... but when you have your work in Flexi, the "rip & print" function is basically like exporting to a different file format. The setting John & Brber are talking about allow you to choose if you "hold" the ripped file in Flexi's "production manager", or if you "delete" it after the print.

This is still not your question as far as I can guess, because you can see the files in the production manager que, so you already know if you are saving them there or not.

I save mine so I can manually delete them later, because while the original work is always saved before ripping, the actual nesting of multiple files, or copies of a file can make it difficult to recreate a cut for example... and if someone gets confused & sends the wrong cut, or the blades not in the machine, or any other event that causes a perfectly good print to need the associated cut to be resent... but that cut has been sent once already... that is why I set Flexi's production manager to "hold" jobs.

Now once I delete the "rip file", whether by allowing the pm to do it, or doing it myself... it's gone for all purposes of running the job again. You would have to rip the original work, including setting up repeats, profiles, & all the other pm settings...

So, to me that is a no... the computer does not store excess copies of the rip files that you need to go find and delete. Of course some of the temp file creation process is over my head, and of course these always show up & can be deleted... but I've never seen them amount to much in terms of slowing down the computer if you deal with them occasionally... but I once got sloppy about cleaning out the production manager, because it was set to hold, and I had an employee running my printer & maybe never told him... and one day we realized we had left like 60 or 80 gigs of crap in there, while all our other files get stored on a server with lots of capacity... put this glut of files in the pm was bogging things down for sure!

 

[gabagoo]

So, I think you are clear on saving your work, so that is not the question... but when you have your work in Flexi, the "rip & print" function is basically like exporting to a different file format. The setting John & Brber are talking about allow you to choose if you "hold" the ripped file in Flexi's "production manager", or if you "delete" it after the print.

This is still not your question as far as I can guess, because you can see the files in the production manager que, so you already know if you are saving them there or not.

I save mine so I can manually delete them later, because while the original work is always saved before ripping, the actual nesting of multiple files, or copies of a file can make it difficult to recreate a cut for example... and if someone gets confused & sends the wrong cut, or the blades not in the machine, or any other event that causes a perfectly good print to need the associated cut to be resent... but that cut has been sent once already... that is why I set Flexi's production manager to "hold" jobs.

Now once I delete the "rip file", whether by allowing the pm to do it, or doing it myself... it's gone for all purposes of running the job again. You would have to rip the original work, including setting up repeats, profiles, & all the other pm settings...

So, to me that is a no... the computer does not store excess copies of the rip files that you need to go find and delete. Of course some of the temp file creation process is over my head, and of course these always show up & can be deleted... but I've never seen them amount to much in terms of slowing down the computer if you deal with them occasionally... but I once got sloppy about cleaning out the production manager, because it was set to hold, and I had an employee running my printer & maybe never told him... and one day we realized we had left like 60 or 80 gigs of crap in there, while all our other files get stored on a server with lots of capacity... put this glut of files in the pm was bogging things down for sure!

not to thread steal here,but dont you find Flexi to be a little dumb the way they set up the defaults. What I mean is that I too after finding the option after a year of printing and cutting "Hold" the cut until I decide to delete it. What is insane is that if somewhere during the day I open some old file that did not have the hold info defaulted , then everything I print after that point in the day will now delete after it is cut. Man that pisses me off more than anything. I have had to recreate prints and fake sending them to get cut files back if something goes wrong with the cut setup...grrrr

 

[GARY CULY]

got it ..isag yes i save all my files ..that wasnt the question ..doug you said what i wanted to hear sir ,thank you ...now as far as hold files deal i understand all that also ..i ALWAYS hold cut files ..because like the guy stated if you say put a rack of small decals in upside down you immediatly see its not cutting right .pull up the arm ,,put it in right ..then you can just go back and send the cut file agian right away .not have to resend a dummy print file and all that[i ctually like the "split files all -by- itself- deal""and not use ANOTHER program just to cut....i go to "clear rip files" about every week ,that moves all them along down the drain[so im getting rid of files you talked of doug] ....all my questions are answered i wondered about ,and know i have no files hanging out i dont need.Thank you men,hope to help you one day.

i wonder why the last guy said flexi looses is p.m. settings every time he sends a file? mine dont. maybe we need to address his lack of check boxes next?

 

[iSign]

gabagoo... when you say "if you open an old file" ...do you mean open a Flexi file, or from production manager, open an old ripped file, straight into production manager instead of opening in Flexi??

If you mean opening it in PM, then I can't say a whole lot about that, but if that re-sets your settings to match the latest file you opened... I guess you need to learn to deal with it. Software can never do everything just the way we want... there are so many users & we want different things...

If you mean opening it in Flexi, I've never had that change my PM settings

 

[gabagoo]

no I mean opening it in Flexi and sending it to PM. Mine goes back to the default of the last print. Not sure why and it annoys the %^%$ out of me cause I never catch it. I even accidently printed 20feet of wallpaper reverse once cause the job before was mirrored. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. you know when your busy and pumping it out, thats when it gets you in a weak moment lol

 

[iSign]

yeah, now that you mention it, I think I've run into that with repeats & maybe mirroring...

but I've never wanted the PM set to delete after printing... but one time after reinstalling to get an upgrade working... we ended up set that way until we needed to re-send a cut & noticed we were screwed...

I guess I wouldn't have thought this was a setting that would be "attached" to a file you opened, because it seems to be a global setting & not one you can apply to a file.

 

[GARY CULY]

oh i think iunderstand what goog is geting at..mayby ive say printed 88 small decals then closed THAT file the next job is the same type material,same profile,same everthing ,heat ,all that BUT i only want one of that..the p.m. was still set on 88 from job before yes you gotta run through real quick ive done that also .now mine everytime i send a file another dialog box pops up first before p.m. screen and asks "do you want same settings" OR "use production manager settings" so i click one of those first,then pops up the production manager..if i want same profile ,heat ,all that i just click same as before,thats 3 seconds.not time waister at all.

now the thing I DO like about flex is the next time[mayby month later] i go to make 88 more of those small decals ,it will know what i had everyhing set at last time i made them..same amount,same profile,same heat .bi-dirct,etc so i think it must attach THAT stuff to the file am i close to thinking right Doug?

 

[iSign]

I am at a disadvantage because my business is such that I'm not the guy running jobs on a daily basis anymore... so I don't have a lot of memories in the last 2 years. In fact in honor of my dedicated Mimaki employee's last day yesterday, I cleaned my printer for the first time in 22 months & had him watch & refresh my memory of the process.

A lot of the printing we do is import large .tiff images into Flexi, resize, import a cut from illustrator sometimes, & rip and print. These jobs don't even get saved as Flexi files, unless the cut/print registration, and/or, some complex resizing & nesting has taken place, or for a guaranteed re-order job, with some of the above effort applied... then we will save a Flexi file & yes, I recall how some of the PM parameters will seem to be recalled. I'm not sure how that works, but I suppose if you call up a reorder, and only change the PM parameters, and then close without saving... you could prove if it is saving it into the .fs file or not.

I know Omega saves a .prm (?) file with the .plt files, and this might be where some parameters are saved with Omega (I like graphics a lot more than this behind the scenes stuff... so it is interesting & I end up learning some of it, but I'm not into it enough that i go out looking to learn it.. so again, I'm a little fuzzy)

I also know Omega can allow saving spool files (.spl) and this would allow running a job again, without even opening the .plt file in Omega. I know I can open a .tiff file in Flexi's production manager to run it without opening in Flexi, but i don't know if we can open .fs files that way, or if there is a Flexi equivilent to .spl files, or .prm files

I'm interested to learn though... so I'll check back.

 

[GARY CULY]

im with ya...appreciate your input Doug ..i always do appreciate your answering questions ..i know when i read it you will tell the straight up scoop and no b.s. if you know the answer youll say it .if not well .youll say that too..i read many answers to post where i feel the responder is just "sorta" making up stuff to appear smart ...thats bad cause it can cause a lot of problems ,not only with the one person that asked,but the hundred that reads it too while its here...i sometimes "think" i know a answer to some queery but unless im damn sure ill not post..i respect that sir.

you do know flexi will open old[or new omega files dont you? you just have to "ungroup " them when you open in flex,change colors from the foils ,ive used the cutlines on files from omega that come in with it ..[i know this cause ive added a contour cut in flexi and it has cut around everything 2 times! that was one reason for getting flexi when i first got my printer .it had everything in one program,it opend omega files [i had hundreds] andican still use omega to draw graphics...i know all the tools in omega to and i like the editing tools better than flexi [i can do it lot quicker] anyways back to the weekend i have 1 more day to screw off a bit.

 

[iSign]

thank you too... I didn't know that about Flexi opening .plt files & I have hundreds as wel. We still edge print, but of course many jobs are better to switch over to inkjet so that tip will help.

Glad that even telling folks what I don't know can still bring compliments for honesty