SignWizard- AHHHHH

[andy]

Anyone else using the Channel Letter plug in for SignWizard 5?

I bought this setup specifically for making channel letters. Now, when I have my first decent channel letter job to do I find that this plug in is about as accurate as a drunk at a dart board.

Anything with a reverse angle bends is way, way out- I'm making 900mm high letters and the letter N overlong by- 60mm GULP!!! If you are trying to make a letter with any points in it- like a W or N the software doesn't truncate the point and sends the return into the main part of the letter.

I've down loaded a demo or the Arete system and the W I've got to make is 160mm longer in signwizard than the plot coming from the Arete system!! That's over 6" out

I am totally amazed that this plug in is for sale if this is the best it can do- I've spent most of the day going round with tape measures and pencils trying to correct the mistakes. I just can't understand why this piece of software is being sold as clearly it doesn't work accurately- and on this type of work near enough is worse than useless.

I've been on to them about this and there's no one available till tomorrow- don't worry about me then or that I've got 15 more letters to make- all of the templates are out for these.

So- if it can't be fixed I'll have to dump it and go with Arete- $2000 which I haven't allowed for and $700 on signwizard which I don't need for anything else- totally Corel based for everything else I do.

Sorry for the rant- just getting real fed up with the sign business- not only are 100's of people jumping into the business and turning it into a hobby rather than a profession my software and equipment suppliers are also trying to put me outta business by not doing there job properly!! Fantastic- not

 

[Bobby H]

Yep, you do have to be careful about some of the sign making software titles. Industry-specific software has much smaller user bases, higher prices and arguably less accountability for bugs.

That's one of the reasons why lots of designers do as much of their work in mainstream graphics applications like CorelDRAW and Illustrator and then only use the expensive industry specific stuff for certain output tasks (computer aided routing, etc.).

Our shop has the Arete channel letter routing app (among other things). It works pretty well. Of course, good principals in channel letter design are still going to be required -such as choosing fonts that are practical to turn into channel letters. "Channel letters in Sloop Script? Sure, if we can make them 8' tall!"