Plug In Thoughts?

[WildWestDesigns]

http://www.astutegraphics.com/products/drawscribe/

I saw this and I thought I would get y'alls overall thoughts on this particular plugin for Illustrator.

 

[Fred Weiss]

It looks neat but I would definitely wait for a downloadable trial version. I was much less impressed with VectorScribe after viewing all their videos.

 

[Circleville Signs]

OK - not to sound like an idiot or anything, but what the heck does that do that I can't already do with Illy's built in tool set?

 

[Kevin-shopVOX]

one thing is for sure..i want a Cintiq

 

[Fred Weiss]

OK - not to sound like an idiot or anything, but what the heck does that do that I can't already do with Illy's built in tool set?

I was most interested in the drawing of overlapping lines and then erasing the excess. What it didn't show was whether or not it then joined them into one vector object including the treatment of the strokes.

It has always seemed to me that Illustrator and the majority of the people that use it has no appreciation for the value of vectors as paths to control a plotter or CAD/CAM device. They see it as a scalable print object and not much beyond that.

 

[Kevin-shopVOX]

It has always seemed to me that Illustrator and the majority of the people that use it has no appreciation for the value of vectors as paths to control a plotter or CAD/CAM device. They see it as a scalable print object and not much beyond that.

I think this is a valid point but not sure if I would blame Illy for the lack of that appreciation. I for one would want to keep the path editable until it is done (or when needed to) then expand/merge everything to get my final shape that is device ready. But then again I know what to expect for the end user or application.

The problem lies in the fact that the majority of the users are not using devices that would require them to know what is really needed to drive those devices. This is even the case for some high end ad agencies. You really have to be in the know to even suspect what you have created, may not be ready or usable for an application such as cut vinyl.

 

[signswi]

I was most interested in the drawing of overlapping lines and then erasing the excess. What it didn't show was whether or not it then joined them into one vector object including the treatment of the strokes.

It has always seemed to me that Illustrator and the majority of the people that use it has no appreciation for the value of vectors as paths to control a plotter or CAD/CAM device. They see it as a scalable print object and not much beyond that.

Out of curiosity, have you played with CS4+'s Shape Builder Tool?

 

[signswi]

I think this is a valid point but not sure if I would blame Illy for the lack of that appreciation. I for one would want to keep the path editable until it is done (or when needed to) then expand/merge everything to get my final shape that is device ready. But then again I know what to expect for the end user or application.

The problem lies in the fact that the majority of the users are not using devices that would require them to know what is really needed to drive those devices. This is even the case for some high end ad agencies. You really have to be in the know to even suspect what you have created, may not be ready or usable for an application such as cut vinyl.

Which realistically isn't a problem--it's something prepress people have and always will ***** about, but it's their slot in life. One person can only handle so much expertise (because we're all going to die, time is not infinite) and there's not a lot of reason for many designers to thoroughly understand production.

That said, a lot of the best designers started out as production designers, having that foundation can be really really useful. It'll fall into a far back second though against someone who is just amazingly infinitely creative with the mediums but can't produce clean production ready art--and that's okay.

 

[Fred Weiss]

Out of curiosity, have you played with CS4+'s Shape Builder Tool?

Yes, when I upgraded to CS 5.5 fro CS 2 I played with all the new tools. Perhaps I didn't play with it enough ... at first exploration it didn't impress me although I cannot remember why. Is it something you like to use?

 

[signswi]

In specific situations, mainly when we get customer art that doesn't easily result in usable cut paths just from the use of pathfinder tools, say results in shapes with tons of tiny internal cutouts that just won't work on a plotter. Just drag a line with the shape builder over those areas and it automatically cleans everything up. Sounded like it might be something useful for you in your line drawing example, perhaps not.