I don't like Flexi, and refuse to design in it. Ive been using Illustrator for the past 4 years and didn't want to change when I just recently purchased an Hp latex with Flexi Rip. I still design everything in Illustrator, then save as pdf, open in Flexi and just send it thru the rip, simple. For my print/cut jobs I add my contour cuts in Flexi, for this process Flexi is great, its a simple task and actually works better than how I did it with Illustrator and Finecut/rasterlink for mimaki.
This was one of my main worries, having to learn a new rip and print/cut method, but it literally took me a half a day and now I much prefer it for this task.