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signlab trouble...not sure

gabagoo

New Member
I am running Signlab 8 on win 7 64 bit. It seems to have been running OK now for a month or 2 and today something has happened.

I have no idea what I could have done, but I had a customer here who needed some cut out stencils for etching granite and needed these triangles at a specific size-11.25". So I set up the job and when I clicked on the triangle and selected size from the drop down menu, I then typed in 11.25. When I clicked on the triangle on the screen it indicated it was 11.2", so I went through the same process again and again it said 11.2". I then zoomed into the triangle and grabbed it and manually moved it and it would jump from 11.2" to 11.6" with nothing in between. I dont have snap to grid on so I know it is not that. I then just selected the nodes and moved it until I had the size.

Next I started cutting these 10' lengths of the triangles. ( he needs 21 sets) I realized afdter the first set it never cut any of the bottom lines of any of the triangles. OK I figured I did not have the plotter set up right so I powered it off and back on and reset the material andf again it would not cut the bottoms. Ok I know a trick for this so I made a small rectangular box and made sure it sat below the baseline of the triangles by about a 1/4". This way maybe it wont cut the bottom of the box but it will know the triangles are above the lowest point in the graphic and will cut them. NOPE!!! WTF, not on a Friday afternoon, thank you...

I reboot the computer, reboot the plotter..try again and again failure.

I then tried to use the circle tool in Signlab to make a small circle to put at the bottom of the triangle to see if that would work and after making the circle I viewed it on the screen and it looked like a crumbled cookie!!!

Now I am getting a little concerned that something is not right. I then tried to type out 3" letters using helvetica medium and they viewed like crap...like some horrible home made garbage font.

So what the hell is happening here?

anyone have any idea what could cause this software issue so suddenly?
 

gabagoo

New Member
yea thanks for the words of wisdom Mosh......

OK I kept trying to do things in this one file and for whatever reason everything seemed corrupt in it.
I decided to start a new file and I typed some text and it looks fine. I then went back to that origianl file and tried typing new text and it still looks like chit.

I have now resaved the file under a new name and I want to see if that changes anything.
Weird i tell you, just plain weird
 

James Burke

Being a grandpa is more fun than working
Sounds like a major case of the gremlins to me.

I occasionally have issues with SignLab, but ususally it's more operator error than not.

Sounds like your trouble may have to do more with something configured incorrectly, or OS issues.

Jump on CadLink's tech forum and do some browsing. Maybe there are known issues and work-arounds.

You might want to try designing the elements in another program and import them into SignLab and see if that makes any difference. I use AI and AutoCAD for about 75% of my designing. I wish I could take the best of each program and roll it into one...that'd be sweet.
 

heyskull

New Member
I would break the objects path and then change start/finish node.
Signlab throws issues like this but very rarely on something so simple.

SC
 

sardocs

New Member
I don't know if this is relevant to your situation, but a couple months ago all my small letters and objects got really distorted, like your cookie shaped o's. Larger objects seemed to overcut past their finish points. I thought it was my plotter getting old and sloppy 'cos I'm using an old Studio 8 I bought at least 15 years ago. It turned out that in Signlab 7, in the cut menu somehow I had mistakenly switched the little dropdown window labeled "Device" from Ioline Studio 8 over to Cadlink fastboard. When that got switched back everything went back to normal.
 

gabagoo

New Member
I don't know if this is relevant to your situation, but a couple months ago all my small letters and objects got really distorted, like your cookie shaped o's. Larger objects seemed to overcut past their finish points. I thought it was my plotter getting old and sloppy 'cos I'm using an old Studio 8 I bought at least 15 years ago. It turned out that in Signlab 7, in the cut menu somehow I had mistakenly switched the little dropdown window labeled "Device" from Ioline Studio 8 over to Cadlink fastboard. When that got switched back everything went back to normal.


I guess I should have said that they appear this way on the screen.I have not even tried to cut them.
I think somehow the untitled file had a problem as I had done quite a few operations before I finally tried to cut anything.

I did try exporting the file out as an eps and then re-inport but the same thing occured.
I will just have to spend the time to redraw it all over again
 
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