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Options you'd like to see in VersaWorks?

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splizaat

New Member
I was thinking about this tonight and was curious what options you guys would like to see with VersaWorks to make your lives easier...for me:

1. Option to turn on/off a Long Beep after a print job is done.
-A lot of times we're out of the room when a print job finishes and it's sitting there for ten minutes before we realize it's done, or we can't hear it finish cutting....if we could somehow make the machine beep for a couple seconds after a print/cut job is done, we'd know exactly when it was done so we could sheet cut and start the next one right away once we hear the beep.

2. Option to allow different spacing between rows/columns.
-We get a lot of customers who want their stickers in strips or in rolls. It'd be nice to pack them tightly one way, and allow more space the other way for cutting. That way we might be able to fit a couple more stickers per row but still enough room to cut them into strips.

Anyone else think of anything good?
 
X

xxtoni

New Member
One thing that annoys the hell out of me in VersaWorks is that the Done "meter" is soooooo wrong. If you print a large job it's always wrong by like an hour.

I have a Chinese printer that cost 6 times less than my VS-640 and it can tell the "time" properly. The great thing about it is, not only does it show the percentage it shows how many passes it has done, how many are left and how much time.

That way even if the remaining time is off I can calculate it fairly accurately myself since I know how many passes I have left.
 
Mike F

Mike F

New Member
Only thing I can't think of other than what's already been mentioned is being able to set the trim marks with bleed or the margin marks with a negative offset for bleed. I know you can set up trim marks in Corel or Adobe but most of the stuff I get is "ready to print" and I don't like to mess with it more than I have to. Also bugs me on the rare occasions when I get a file that's actually 100% ready to go other than missing bleed and trim marks.

Heard somewhere they're revamping the color management / color matching features. No details other than they've got something brewing though.
 
D

DigitalSolutions

New Member
Allow the ability to drag and drop files temporarily in the grey area while nesting to better arrange.

On the new machines i dislike that sheet cut is under a menu option and not a hard button on the control pad, but that's hardware not software.
 
S

splizaat

New Member
I've noticed the new ink warning in 4.7.1 is a bit off as well. It warned us about not enough magenta to complete the job and we ended up printing 500 4"x4" stickers after the warning came up before having to swap the cartridge.

I will say though, that i do LOVE versaworks and the abilities it has...this is in NO WAY a complaint thread. I'm just curious what other options you high-volume shops would like to see. It's always nice to see what you big guys think of things.
 
TXFB.INS

TXFB.INS

New Member
all listed above

scaling without locked ratios,
just now printing a banner and the clamp was .2 too small width so instead of just being able to re-size (width only) from VW had to go reposition the clamps or go back into corel and re-size then export all over again.
 
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K

kanini

New Member
Pat White said:
I agree with all of the above PLUS:

-Repeats..... is 250 REALLY enough?!

-Increasing/Reducing copies - almost every time I'm changing quantities for large runs of small decals/labels, the rows get shuffled around. Instead of filling a row then starting on the next, it starts throwing copies all over the place and you literally have to manually drag them back in line. Then of course it never lets you line them up properly, since there is no "snap to baseline" option.

-PDF handling - So many times in the last few months have I tried printing PDF's only for it to print random sections (looked fine on the preview) and lock up on me. Hours and hours wasted with this problem.
Click to expand...

Agree with those, but doesn't VW have "snap to baseline" button, next to the rearrange tiles button at the top bar in the preview window? Had the same problem until I found the button. You drag the copy to about the right place, selects the copies and click the button and they align as tight as possible...?
 
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splizaat

New Member
TXFB.INS said:
all listed above

scaling without locked ratios,
just now printing a banner and the clamp was .2 too small width so instead of just being able to re-size (width only) from VW had to go reposition the clamps or go back into corel and re-size then export all over again.
Click to expand...

If you're going to crop .2" off, it's only going to affect the width by around the same...why wouldn't you just use locked ratios? or clip it off with the clipping/tiling tab?
 
TXFB.INS

TXFB.INS

New Member
Pat White said:
You could've cropped .2" off, no?

Or tell it the roll is wider and just say "okay" when it asks you if you want to continue with the smaller width.
Click to expand...

yes, those are both options and we use them. being lazy and not wanting to click the mouse extra.

locked ratios is what I would like to see changed, have control over X & Y independently.
 
SIGNTIME

SIGNTIME

New Member
I would like a save and clear queue option that just lets me chose the destination and saves everything it needs and and an option to do it automatically every so often
 
C

CanuckSigns

Active Member
I would like to see some way of cropping something from within versaworks. for example, a customer supplies a PDF file for a banner, but the page size of the pdf doesn't match the proportions of the banner, so either you have a ton of wasted mateial, or you have to contact the customer and spend 30 minutes explaining to them what they need to do.

If you could crop the white area off, it wold make it sooooo much easier!
 
petepaz

petepaz

New Member
pretty much what was already said (also i need to fool around with versaworks a little more because there are things i have no idea it could do)
one other thing i would like to see is a file preview when importing (like you have in illustrator) many times i am searching for a job to re-run that someone else ran last and i can't find the correct file but with a preview i would save alot of time
 
Mike F

Mike F

New Member
Scaling without the locked ratio would be pretty nice, if the size is a hair larger than the width of the media I usually just let it take the hit to height as well but it would be cool to adjust width and height independently. Would also be nice for those customers who send "print ready" files but then say "Oh, the file is 4x6, but we want it to be 9x17, distortion be damned!".

Can't think of a time I've needed it off the top of my head but being able to crop could be pretty useful.

One thing I just thought of, I'd like to be able to save and load preset queue settings like you can do for the print / cut calibration settings for different medias on the actual machine. I know you can do this on a job by job basis by saving the .rvw job files, but you can only load the settings by loading that job, and the settings don't carry over to the next file you add to the queue. I also know you can set the defaults for both queues by double clicking the A and B folder icons on the main Versaworks screen, but it'd be better to have way to... hmmm, I'm gonna stop myself right there and ask a n00b question, I can do that just by making custom media profiles can't I? (At least Pat doesn't have to feel so bad about missing the "align tiles" button now...)
 
P Wagner

P Wagner

--
watsons signs said:
I would like to see some way of cropping something from within versaworks. for example, a customer supplies a PDF file for a banner, but the page size of the pdf doesn't match the proportions of the banner, so either you have a ton of wasted mateial, or you have to contact the customer and spend 30 minutes explaining to them what they need to do.

If you could crop the white area off, it wold make it sooooo much easier!
Click to expand...

This is doable from the Job Settings dialog > Clip and Tile Tab.
 
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nate

New Member
The things you guys are asking for are available in other RIPS. Being that VersaWorks is essentially a freebie I doubt they have many resources dedicated to reinventing the wheel. That being said VersawWorks has certainly come a long way since the days when Roland jumped Wasatch's ship and went out on their own.

It might be in your best interest to look in to other software iF having a feature is going to make you more productive and thus make you more money.
 
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splizaat

New Member
I think versaworks is PLENTY powerful...I was simply curious what other shops want. This isn't a rant or a complaint thread at all - and so far it actually looks like a lot of features for some have been discovered because of it :)
 
N

nate

New Member
Pat White said:
Which aftermarket RIP would you suggest...... Caldera perhaps....? :wink:
Click to expand...

Yea!

I'll tell you... Our first Roland, a Soljet II SC-545EX came with the first version of VersaWorks. This was just after Roland and Wasatch had split.

As we acquired equipment we tried the Wasatch route to keep them all under the same umbrella. I've got to be brutally honest here-- I don't know who Wasatch is kidding but Wasatch isn't ready for any sort of production shop. We then went back to running the Rolands now on individual copies of VersaWorks until they made it so one VersaWork install can run four machines.

We moved in to running three Epson GS-6000 and purchased Onyx. Onyx was good but it crashed a lot, it struggled with so many printers on one computer, took forever to RIP, wouldn't nest nicely since Onyx can't auto - rotate non square resolutions, crashed a lot, struggled with PDFs, crashed a lot, etc, etc. We spent a good year and a half running two Rolands and three Epsons with it. It "worked", but it was a struggle for us to get things done without some sort of trouble.

I met Ben, the Caldera salesman at ISA two and a half years ago or so. He suggested I give Caldera a try. The rest is in my success story below. It's a bit out of date with equipment count but we run 2 Roland XJ 740s, 9 HP L25500s, 3 HP L26500s, 1 HP LX800 and 1 Mimaki JV5-320DS with it. In addition we have six Summa S160-T machines also running via Caldera. Caldera has paid for itself many times over. It's fast, efficient, and is instantaneous.

Here's a good example: We can cut up a couple of vehicle wraps in Tiling, send them all over to print and BE PRINTING within a few minutes. You are NEVER waiting on the RIP. You hit print, your printer starts to print. Talk about time saving! 150' of material cut, nested and printing in less than ten minutes.

And it never crashes. Everything is modular. A Problem with one machine doesn't create a ripple effect through the software.

I've got nothing to do with Caldera except be a satisfied user. However, I've been through VersaWorks, Wasatch and Onyx, and I have got to tell you this-- you're losing money with your current solutions.
 
idsignsil

idsignsil

New Member
I don't like having to go back into the media explorer and turn off all of the media I don't use after an update. I am not complaining, I think VersaWorks is great! With the few changes mentioned above, it could be outstanding.
 
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splizaat

New Member
Still looking for that vertical/horizontal spacing option :)

Also, maybe I'm blind, but what about a "print image boundary" option with a color selection box. We do a lot of White banners and need to know the boundary to fold/hem on. Obviously this can be achieved in illustrator before bringing into illustrator but a lot of artwork would be nice to just toss it in for workflow.
 
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